I FEAR they have called time for the last time at the Wheatsheaf in Upper Stratton, a pub I first frequented when I was about eight years old.

In fact, I used to do most of my serious drinking there, when I was at school.

Things were a bit different then, of course.

They had an off-licence, for a start, where all the local kids used to turn up at the weekend, cashing in the deposit on empty bottles to replenish their Ace Lemonade, and scraping together a few extra halfpennies to buy a packet of salt and vinegar crisps.

I didn’t realise it at the time - because we didn’t meet until we were older - but my wife was doing it too, at the self same pub.

The only difference was she preferred cheese and onion to salt and vinegar, but then she’s always been funny like that.

What I remember most about the Wheatsheaf, though, is a load of bollards.

I was always fascinated by these unusual shoulder-high concrete sentries in the car park.

I thought they were playground equipment, and it wasn’t until I was older, and they became waist-high, that I realised they were for parking control, although they also seemed to have been installed for eccentric aesthetic reasons.

Now the pub is all boarded up, I have a terrible desire to somehow acquire a bollard from the empty car park, before anybody puts them in a skip, bring it home and plant it in our back garden.

In a world where we seem powerless to prevent change and the disintegration of aspects of our childhood and our youth, rescuing bollards seems as much as we can do to preserve a disappearing past.

Pubs have been closing all over town.

The other day I was walking past the Queensfield - or rather where the Queensfield used to be.

If I hadn’t been pushing my bike, which had suffered a puncture, I might not have noticed that, in fact, it has already gone off to join all those other Swindon pubs in the sky that have closed in my lifetime - most of them in recent years.

We will never be able to sup again in the likes of the Duke of Wellington, the George, Bulldog, the Bakers Arms (Railway Village), the Falcon, Jacob’s Ladder, Grapes, White House, Rodbourne Arms, the Prince of Wales or the Lady Margaret.

The bulldozers have already moved in to erase all trace of the Queensfield, presumably to make way for housing.

But at least some of our lost pubs have been saved for a new use, but as a real ale drinker who feels far more at home in a pub than in, say, a coffee shop, I should be appalled by the change.

But let’s be realistic. Some of the pubs mentioned I hardly ever drank in, others I had never set foot in.

Pubs are subject to evolution and, if you want to see the principle of the survival of the fittest in action, all you need to do is pop out for a pint.

The survivors have survived for a reason.

There may be fewer, but today’s pubs are usually cleaner, freer from awful music, and appeal to women (and sometimes families) as much as men.

And not only do they provide a far better choice of drinks, but the beer is better than it was, all those years ago.

Best of all - every one of them is smoke-free.

So the time has come to drink to what we have, instead of crying in our beer.