"Why go to the pub?" I ask, " What's so special about a pub?"
Ninesh usually looks at me and shakes his head sadly as though to say: " You poor thing, how can you not understand?"
But I really don't.
I don't understand what's so great about going and standing in a packed pub, crushed shoulder to shoulder with people who you don't know.
I don't understand why sitting and yelling at each other over the noise of the crowd and the music is a fun way to communicate.
I don't understand the point of paying huge amounts of money for a pint of mediocre beer or a glass of horrible wine.
" It's the atmosphere," says Ninesh, " the buzz...."
" Really," I say, "The atmosphere of drunken lairishness and the buzz of flies around the disgusting toilets?"
Ninesh sighs
" What did you have in mind then?" he asks.
" How about we stay in?" I say.
" What!," he says, "Why would we stay in when it's our chance to go out?"
" The calm atmosphere and the buzzlessness," I say.
Ninesh looks at me dismayed.
" We could ask some friends round here?" I suggest.
" Well if we going to meet up with some friends, we might as well do it at the pub," says Ninesh, cheering up, " It's probably easier for everyone to meet in town. What's the point of everyone coming here?"
" Well," I say, " everyone around us would be our friends, we wouldn't have to shout to hear each other and we could drink better quality alcohol much more cheaply."
Ninesh is not convinced.
From the moment he turned 18 he has loved the pub culture.
A place to hang out with your friends away from your parents.
A place to meet new people and try out new drinks.
A place to reinvent yourself and become the person you always wanted to be.
A place to sit nursing a beer, putting the world to rights with your mates.
Going to your "local," was just what everyone did on a Friday and Saturday night
But that was back in the day.
Back in the day when everyone had a favourite local.
Back in the day when every pub prided itself on being unique and different..
Back in the day when publicans invested time and energy in their customer, because they cared whether or not they came back.
Back in the day when you could walk into the pub and be greeted by familiar faces and the person behind the bar would already be pulling your favourite pint.
But those days are gone.
Most of the pubs, in Chichester anyway, are chains , less dingy but less personal, magnolia and beige to their extremely characterless cores.
" I'm just going down the pub," used to mean, " I'm popping out to spend time with the people I would have chosen as my family if I had been given the choice."
Nowadays it usually means " I'm going out to get as drunk as I can, so don't wait up."
True pub culture seems to be disappearing.
I know it probably still exists in country villages where there is not much else to do in the evening.
But in towns and cities it's getting harder and harder to find.
Pubs are just not the same.
There are fewer and fewer comfy corners where you can sit, beer in hand, putting the world to rights and there are more and more half-lit corners where you can stand, doing shots and using your tongues for something else!
Perhaps it's just that I'm getting old.
Perhaps I've already reached that stage of my life when I'm always secretly thinking: " In my day it was...."
Pubs, like everything else, cannot be blamed for moving with the times.
I, on the other hand, could be blamed for standing still.
But I can't help mourning the passing of the time when each pub was different, when one was the party pub and one the " live music," pub, when beer was affordable and the person behind the bar knew your name.
There was a time when each small community had it's local pub and that pub was the heart and soul of the local community.
Now pubs compete to be the trendiest place to hang-out.
And instead of being welcoming, there are bouncers on the doors to keep you out.
Being part of "pub culture," no longer means knowing that there is always a stool by the bar with your name on it and a friendly ear to bend when you're feeling lonely.
Being part of the pub culture now means knowing which is the coolest pub to start your weekend pub-crawl from.
It's not about the character of a pub but about which pub has the cheapest alcohol.
Ninesh and I have reached an impasse.
He, a pub worshipper will never stop loving them, and I, a pub atheist, will never understand why.
But we are free for the night and there are worse ways to spend it than in a noisy, characterless pub- like spending it watching football on TV.
So I take his hand and head for the door.
" Come on then," I say, " which pub shall we go to?"
" Well," he says, " if we go to the Nags Head, the footie should be on...."
I am wrong.... I can't actually think of a worse way to spend the nght!
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