Watching The Heavens Unfold In The Pub Section As The Future Looks On

Sometimes a pub visit creates a venn diagram of glee, sensation, and nostalgia.

The circle of glee in the diagram comes from your companions and the beer while the circle of sensations are the slow warmth of the alcohol in your blood and the brace of farmfield air when you step outside.

The final circle, of nostalgia, is the thought of the merry drinkers who are now gone, who argued at your ear or at ears like yours, and the afternoons and evenings you have spent ignoring the stale inhuman defeats of money, mortgages and DIY by tilting your hat at the good life.

The glee, sensation and nostalgia circles intersect at The Pub Section. In the Pub Section I found the Chichester Arms in Bishops Tawton, a pub so determined to thrive that it was born again, nine months after a devastating fire in 2005.

I arrived one midweek evening with my wife and baby just as autumn was starting to blow cool through the North Devon countryside. The Chich, as it is popularly known locally to generations of fans, is a dining pub but it has not destroyed its pub DNA in pursuit of the Hungry Belly Pound. It has kept the cosy chaos of all lovely country pubs without being cloyingly twee or phoney.

Indeed, there was some controlled chaos in the kitchen when we arrived; a key player, the chef, I think, was unexpectedly unavailable. But the barman stayed friendly.

I drank two fine pints of Exmoor Ale, as crisp as the dew forming on the hills and I ate a beefburger, regular readers will be astonished to hear. It was superb beef, and was well-cooked, but needed a bit of seasoning.

I took the last few mouthfuls of my final Exmoor Ale outside to look at the stars and the waxing moon, and to inhale some of the frosty nostalgia.

There were few constellations on show, but I saw Cassiopeia and the north star. Cassiopeia was named after the Greek mythological wife of Cepheus, king of Ethiopia, you know; she was sent to the heavens because she bragged about her beauty, hardly a punishment for any crime, including honesty. I managed to find the moon too, without looking at a book. You could spend an hour in a beer garden in the twilight, thinking of venn diagrams, and how many bits of life fit in circles, and go quietly insane.

I had my baby boy in one arm, his eyes like mirrors inside his woolly hood, while his mother finished her dinner in rare peace inside. An almost mythical experience.

My boy was too young for a sip of my beer, although he was "baptised" with ale in his first week of life, and I didn't want to share the magic stuff anyway. But he was not too green, I hoped, to absorb the sense of the dark countryside just out of sight. I was so fixed in the Pub Section, being watched by the future.

THE CHICHESTER ARMS, BISHOPS TAWTON, NORTH DEVON

ADAM'S ALE RATING: 4 OUT OF 5

DRINK THIS: EXMOOR ALE