In a fug of bleach, I am accosted by a man displaying symptoms of lunacy

A shiny beetle-black glass of glorious Guinness is often a failsafe option for the real beer fanatic who has been obliged by circumstance to visit a pub where the landlord or landlady thinks ale is a type of hard rain.

If the gods are smiling, and how could we prove they were or were not?, you will see a bottle of Ireland's finest stout on a dusty wooden shelf behind the bar, possibly next to some neon-coloured drinks in a fridge and some pork scratchings in a cardboard box. But these days the bottle option is less common, so there is draft Guinness.

At its best, draft Guinness is a welcome old pal of a drink but it is not as easy or cheap to keep and serve as keg lager, which might, or might not, account for the average-tasting pint I had in Sherry's Tavern in Barnstaple. But maybe I'm being unfair; maybe my senses were out-of-whack.

People who did not want smoking banned in our pubs sometimes complain about the smell of alehouses, now the scent-cloak of burning, and burned, tobacco is forbidden. 

I am in favour of the smoking ban, on health grounds, but as soon as we walked in and my ears adjusted to the karaoke, my nose and lungs and belly had to cope with a tang which I imagine a perfumier might describe as having a top note of bleach, with an undertone of lager, and a wisp of, er, something sold in a bottle labelled "perfume". Huddled beneath the din, like a man lost in a bunker somewhere in nomansland, my friend provided a less kind assessment of the vibes. For the first time in my life, apart perhaps from the times I visited those  plastic toilets at the Glastonbury music festival where the previous visitors had left too much evidence of their visit (and how little would have been too much, I hear you say), I longed for a huddle of incessant cigar smokers to appear and start blowing Cuban fumes up my nose.

No real ale was on offer that night, so to the Guinness we went by default. I have drank draft Guinness in many pubs around England and Ireland, and even further afield. Indeed, for some time in my early 20s I acquired a taste for stout and I regularly drank nothing else and, over-doing it, became slightly fat. You know good Guinness when you get it: it's bitter, creamy, long-lasting on the tongue and thick with pungent flavour. Maybe my tastebuds had been affected by the jagged smell of disinfectant, but the pint I had, and admittedly it was only one pint, seemed insipid.

As I took my first sips, a rather excited man with slightly unmatched eyeballs appeared at my face and asked me which road I lived in.

I politely lied to him, and he said with a look of barely controlled glee: "You're lying". 

Luckily I was called away to the karaoke area at the back of the pub, which is decorated with framed photographs of pop stars such as Oasis. I'd happily say if the customers looked like they were enjoying themselves (which they do in a pub I have already admitted I don't much rate on the atmosphere front: Wetherspoon's) but there was an air of desperation in the corners. Pubs have always had their natural share of melancholy, I suppose.

While my nose and mouth learned to adjust to Sherry's, and what it offered a pub loving man, my ears and brain were assaulted by the sound of the karaoke. Again, just as Guinness is a good beer if properly kept and served in the right environment, so singing in pubs is, at the right time and with the right tune and atmosphere, a good hear. But a metaphorical photocopy of a bad Robbie Williams song, sung with as much soul as a plastic bag, is my idea of pub misery. Then our lot started singing and things really deteriorated; I felt sorry for the regulars.

Sherry's Tavern, Boutport Street, Barnstaple

Adam's Ale Rating: One out of Five

Drink This: Whisky?

A potent mix for the future?

The financial pages of the national press this weekend have contained interesting news for the pub fanatic. Punch Taverns and Enterprise Inns, two of the major pub companies, who have numerous pubs in North Devon, have seen their shares in freefall. Their landlords will tell you, usually in private, that this is no surprise at all; the tied house system obliges landlords to pay over the odds for their beer, making it even harder for them to compete, particularly in a recession.

In addition, if landlords had greater control over their buying and selling, I think our pubs would improve overnight; the bland corporatisation of our pubs is disheartening, at the least, anyway and perhaps the potent mix of a sinking economy and the struggling pubco sector could lead to a welcome resurgence of the free house. Imagine! Goodbye uniform decor, ale, music, prices, service. Hello character, fun, community, history, and...profits for our local pubs. But I remain pessimistic, at least in the short term.

Wetherspoon's has launched what seems to be a price-cutting war, with 99p pints, which few free houses could ever compete with. I have said before, JDW sells outstanding beer, but its pubs have zero attraction otherwise; they, and their ilk, seem to be pure function, zero poetry. That is not surprising, because they are often micro-managed, to all intents and purposes, by suits clutching armfuls of spreadsheets and PR garbage.

I only wish the dead hand of the suits had not rested so heavily on our beloved pub trade; the wizards in charge of these pub property dynasties rake in millions, while our landlords often earn less than the minimum wage. And we are left with pubs that are more like an outlet of McDonalds than the Rose and Crown. "Theme bars" have only one theme: frail crapness runs through them like letters in Blackpool rock (which has lots of theme bars).

There also seems little we pub-goers can do to pioneer a revolution in pub ownership, other than supporting our free houses by going to them and perhaps lobbying for a law to oblige pub companies to give landlords the option of buying their own beer direct from brewers. 

I wouldn't be surprised if the pub firms started trying to cut their losses; the long-promised decimation of the pub trade might be about to happen quicker than we thought.

What will happen then could herald a brilliant future for pub lovers and landlords.

In the meantime, we need to keep it local and support our pubs as best we can, particularly the good ones.