Local

"The Closed Shop", Commonside. Like a drama setting from a different life.

Shirley and I first went into that little pub in the weeks before our wedding. We were both in our twenties and had received the keys to our property just a month before the great day. This was in the same year that Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer. But our wedding was in October, not July  and there were no television cameras or horse-drawn carriages.

The end terraced house on Leamington Street cost £15,250 or $20,884 in US dollars. It had been upgraded by a local builder but there was still plenty to do to make it habitable. We needed carpets and curtain rails and of course furniture.

Nearly everything we got was secondhand - including the carpets - but at least Shirley's parents bought us a new bed as a wedding gift. I fitted all of the carpets myself and my brother Simon bought us a Victorian kitchen table that I had to sand down and  varnish before we could use it. We have still got that table today. I found an old wooden chair in a skip (American: dumpster) and I treated it with paint stripper as I laboriously scrubbed off the smallest evidence of gloss paint.

Yes, it was a rush to get the house ready and of course we both had full-time jobs. Shirley was a nurse in the Accident and Emergency Department of The Royal Hallamshire Hospital and I was working at Rowlinson School on the southern edge of the city.

After a weekend or a long evening of working on the house, we felt we deserved alcoholic refreshment in our local hostlery so we walked down Hands Lane to "The Closed Shop" before heading back to our rented flat on Wiseton Road.

And so visiting "The Closed Shop" became a habit. After three years, Shirley became pregnant with Ian and following his birth our visits to the pub were reduced. Occasionally we had a babysitter - like my old friend Tony - but very often Shirley would say, "It's okay. I don't mind if you go down there for a pint or two."

I became a regular as did good friends from our neighbourhood - including Tony, Colin and Lorraine, Kirk and Alan and Rowena and "The Young Ones" who rented a crumbling old house nearby. I also got to know other, older regulars till "The Closed Shop" became like an extra living room but with Tetley's bitter on tap. How many of my hard-earned pounds did I  pass over that bar?

I always felt at ease in that back street pub and before chucking out time on a Friday or Saturday,  I would occasionally sing upon request.. "The Wild Rover", "Summertime Blues",  or perhaps the Yorkshire anthem, "On Ikley Moor Bah Tat". I have always possessed the ability to sing in tune and especially in those years of youth and vigour  I could fill that pub's recesses with my voice, frequently turned up to full volume. Occasionally, other inebriated regulars would join in.

The landlord and landlady were called Harold and Sylvia. They had three sons but only one lived with them on the pub's upper floor. He was called John. The whole family were into horse racing. Both absent sons worked at racing stables in North Yorkshire and both Harold and John were failed jockeys but they were still passionate about a sport that has never appealed to me.

Sylvia was like a wartime sergeant major but she developed a soft spot for me. One night, even as I was singing, I overheard her talking about me  to a man I had seen in the pub only a couple of times before .

"I know he comes across as serious - like he's looking right through you but once you get to know him he's okay. Quite funny at times."

I'll take that.