THERE was a time when I was given to drinking on licensed premises on Saturday nights. There was a group of us who would congregate in the same pub, in a particular area of that pub, where we were all sitting in close accord on three sides of a small bar.

It used to be quite a competitive issue, laying claim to this bar area, because there was another group that used to seek it out as well.

They used to irritate us because they used to smoke what we called "funny fags" and would take up valuable, and coveted, bar space for the whole evening while only drinking a couple of halves of mild, their relaxation coming from whatever they were inserting into their rolling fags.

Ours was a good crowd of real country people, farmers, farm workers, and some who didn't work on the land, but came from a rural background, for example, lorry drivers who would help you shear or cart bales at weekends. The landlord would sometimes put a 78 wind-up gramophone on the bar and we would end up with a sing-song.

It all disappeared when the pub closed for a couple of years and we all went in different directions on Saturday nights.

What I took for granted at the time and which also disappeared was a lift home. For years I would pick up a neighbour and drive him in the four miles to our local town and at 11 o'clock, as good as gold, his wife would take us home.

Drinking and driving was strictly a no-go area around here at the time. We were possessed of a very driven local policeman who had a mission in life to clear the roads of cars. He would lurk about on the outskirts of the town while the two local "specials" would watch pub car parks and radio him when a prospect left to go home. Not for a minute am I condoning drinking and driving, but he would breathalyse people sleeping in cars. He got my son while he was relieving himself against a barn wall as he set off to walk home one night, just because he had his keys in his pocket.

He would breathalyse farmers in the early hours as they drove in Land Rovers to go around their sheep at lambing time.

A lift home was very precious and still is.

Times change and we all move on, but sometimes I do fancy a visit to the pub on Saturday night. If I've been away a lot during the week I'm not bothered, but now I occasionally go to the pub in the village.

It's only a mile-and-a-half away and, in theory, I reckon I'm safe to drink four halves, but I've usually drunk them by nine o'clock. It's not far and the roads around here are very quiet and the incentives to "just have one more" are very tempting.

I don't think I'm much of a danger on a road where I am unlikely to meet more than one car; it just needs a bit of common sense, because the same rules apply to me as those to someone driving at 70mph down a motorway.

Going back to the times when we had that good crowd together, central to our fun was a great character, now sadly departed, who farmed in the hills outside town. He would be in the pub by seven o'clock every night of the week and taken there by his wife who would fetch him home at 11pm.

His vulnerable time was lunchtime at weekends when he would drive in for a few pints on his own. The vigilant policeman referred to earlier, started to take interest and actually chased him home a couple of times, but didn't quite catch him.

My friend, a resourceful man, made a plan. For most of us the plan would have involved staying at home at lunchtime, but he had other ideas. Half-way home for him, down these narrow lanes, was a sharp 90-degree bend. There was a gateway on the angle of the bend and inside the gateway, but also at an angle, was a large barn.

The theory was that if he thought the police car was after him, he would drive straight through the gate and take a right-angle turn at speed into the barn and be out of sight, where he thought he would lie low until he decided it safe to go home.

He even practised this manoeuvre a couple of times to perfect it. I came upon him one Saturday evening in the pub in reflective mood. We were on our own and I could sense something had gone wrong: "That Lewis, the policeman, was after me at dinnertime." There's a long pause now while he tends to the need of his pipe. It's up to me to drive the conversation on.

"Did he catch you?"

"No, I've been ready for him for some time." He gets quite animated now as he tells me the story. "You know that sharp corner by Davies's barn, well I've had my eye on that for some time. I went straight through the gateway at about 30mph and whipped round into the barn and out of sight. About a minute later Lewis came roaring up the road, blue lights a-flashing, never saw me. He went back 10 minutes later and I walked home across the fields."

He puffs on his pipe and takes about half a pint out of his glass.

"Well that's all right then" I say, "you got away with that."

"No it's not, they'd parked a bloody baler just inside the shed and I drove straight into it and wrote my car off."

His cars were never very valuable; probably third-party, fire and theft, so there would be financial loss to go with the moral victory. "He thinks he's going to take my licence off me, but he never will." "Why not?" "Never had one."