Martha's

Farewell, then, Martha's. Portsmouth's town centre pub closed its doors for the last time on Monday.

I hadn't been in it for a few years now but, heaven knows, it was a big part of my life at various times over the last 30 years.

Just around the corner from where I worked when first arriving here, it became a home from home, scene of some tremendous pool games and source of the occasional betting coup. We were the pool team for a while, or a big part of it. We were educated in the dark arts of dominos at the end of the bar by Cass Campbell and Kenny Jones, old boys who knew a thing or two that we could never quite fathom.

The most spectacular bet was when everybody was on Leysh in the Cambridgeshire at 33/1, but one Saturday night I announced that Sagace would win the Arc, which it did the next day at about 8/1.

I made my one and only appearance as a strippagram in there in 1986, was it. So it was no surprise that a few years later it had become a flagship gay bar, no doubt seeking to relive the beauty of that seminal evening.

After that I was lucky enough to be part of a regularly succesful team in the Sunday night quiz and it was a regular Friday night after work hangout.

'Gin and tonic, please.'

'Oooh, I make the best gin and tonics in Portsmouth.'

(I daresay you do, young man. I daresay you do.)

It was never less than flattering to catch the eye of a good-looking young boy in there. But I'm sorry. I wish I could have explained.

So, one's life closes down behind you as you pass through it. The last time I was in there was probably the Thursday lunchtime I beat Clifford 8-0 at pool and that was the last time we ever played pool at lunchtime. Once, having the place to ourselves, I realized we were at that moment, Portsmouth's leading gay attraction, knocking the reds and yellows around until one of us happened to be left on the black. Any hopeful homosexual turning up with with their Rough Guide would have taken one look at us and sniffed, 'Is that it? Portsmouth's not what it was.'

But time for us seems to be linear rather than circular so we're not likely to be back in there with Billy Ocean and Five Star on the video juke box, the great Ken and Jane Urquhart as our hosts, the sulky girls turning up because a Navy ship was back in; the camp young men with their little tins of vaseline or the dungareed girls swagging pints of lager are just as unlikely to be there again as the drag act or the dubiously stained green baize of that hallowed arena of tactical and technical mishap.

There would be a poem in it if I hadn't just used up all my best memories of it.

Thanks for the memories, Martha's. All our yesterdays are gone with your famous name.