For reasons I still struggle to understand, our Conservative-dominated government tried in November to preserve the "tie", the system by which pubs owned by breweries were forced to buy their drinks from that brewery. This was, the brewers say, enabling them to make the sort of profits that keep pubs open. The evidence of the 30 closures a week suggests that was not the case, and that something radical had to be done in order to stop the British boozer going out of business altogether. A Commons rebellion defeated this vested interest, and now pub landlords can buy their drink from wherever they want. This should drive down the price and perhaps attract more people into pubs, rather than sit alone at home drinking supermarket beer, because the prices ought to go down. The brewers, starved of their unreasonable, restrictive-practice based profits, may well close some pubs. Equally, they may well find that the houses they own generate larger turnovers because of this deregulation. Or they can sell their pubs off to people who might, as the economy recovers, find themselves able to make a success of a business that, for centuries, was inevitably successful.

Pubs have gone out of their way to attract a wider range of customers. Most have parts where children can go with their parents; the best ones still have bars set aside where they can't. Food is now the sine qua non of the thriving business, and much of it is rather good, even in those places not known by the pretentious and rather unpleasant phrase "gastro pub". I know various unpretentious places that buy their meat from a proper butcher rather than a low-grade cash and carry, and have fish brought in from the coast, and who have local bakers provide them with high-quality bread. Local pubs become showcases for local produce. Freed of the control of big brewers who drove down quality while driving up the prices, they buy in their beer from local micro-breweries, and offer their customers victuals of a quality probably never seen before in such places. So it is ironic, at a time when some pubs are probably far better than they have ever been, that so many of them are closing down.

In the part of East Anglia where I have lived all my life I drive around and see pubs I stopped at 20 or 30 years ago now turned into houses, or, if the village is lucky, an Indian restaurant. Going to a restaurant is, though, an event. Going to a pub is an everyday part of life. It used to be a place where fathers took their sons to help civilise them and introduce them to adult society. I have spent some of the happiest hours of my life in such places. I only hope my children have the chance to do the same.