The vexed question of ear-splitting pop music in 1970s-style back street boozers once again demands debate

We had a drink first, my good friend J and I, in The Fountain, a refurbished foodie bar in Trinity Street in the centre of Barnstaple.

We've both got a baby son a piece so we're always at the brittle-sighed point of terrible nervous exhaustion whenever we meet for a pint.

You could store bar snacks, cashew nuts perhaps, in the deep folds under our child-ruined eyeballs. You could hang us upside down by our ankles from a tower block, firing bales of flaming straw at us from medieval catapults, and we would take the opportunity to sleep in our stirrups, not soil in our cords, like cowards.

In fact, we're a bit like swimmers, as, I think, a lot of good-hearted pub fanatics are; like North Devon sea-plungers, we need to ease in to the passtime, to let the sheer saltwater move over our heads and wash away the work, the crying, the dancing chariots of gloom, the ever-howling mangy dogs of death, who stalk our every breath...

But so much for the chuckles; we need to let the soothing wooden cradle of the English pub bring us back to the earth frame of our characters - with love, with beauty, with beer. Shame then that the Fountain felt a bit like a three-star hotel lobby.

Yes, the Guinness (which is £3 a pint in most places now, gods help us all), was good enough. Yes, everything was in order. But it was a bar, not a pub, so I shall reserve further comment for our next engagement, which was at the Corner House, a well-known back street boozer in the centre of Barnstaple. The Corner House has pub DNA running through its wood and bricks and glass in genial torrents; it surely grows its customers like a tree makes its limbs.

It was mid-evening on a Saturday and the place was busily turning, but not overcrowded, with people who knew each other, a sure sign of a proper locals alehouse. As we rested our pints of Tribute (good pint, Tribute, and first brewed to celebrate the 1999 solar eclipse) on a lacquered table from the 1970s, I was transported to a semi-mythical era which ended just before I was born. Could I see men with long hair and flared trousers, smoke-billowing faces, chatting up "dolly birds" by the bar? Was that Rod Stewart on the "jukebox"? Were they strike placards by the door?

No. But I could not escape a, possibly delusional on my part, pleasantly anti-fashion Ted Heath-era vibe at the Corner House. Even one of the bar pumps was surely a little plastic block of nostalgia, not a bit of equipment. Full marks to them too for keeping the grand old ceramic urinals in the gents (a sign the pub's history goes beyond the 1970s). You know they don't make wee-holes like that any more, more's the pity. Ahhh, I thought as I relieved myself in the ample porcelain theatre. Ahhh, the nostalgic thought of trips to the outside bogs at the Bridge Inn in Topsham, with the cool night air birds made strange by a bellyful of Devon ale.

The only downer was the absurdly ear-shattering volume of the pop music (Britney Spears anyone?). Pubs are for conversations or solitary contemplation. Extremely loud recorded music is for discotheques, and discotheques are for dancing.

They still have discotheques, right?

The Corner House, Boutport Street, Barnstaple

ADAM'S ALE RATING: 3 out of 5

DRINK THIS: Tribute (4.2%)