I know I’ve written about it before, but I’m going to write about it again. Because it’s the pub. And not just any pub, but the Battle of Trafalgar, which you will know because you pass it on the road up the hill from the station. For some time I avoided it on the grounds that no pub that close to a train station could be any good. How foolish I was. 

Space is tight in The Whistler so I won’t describe it in detail and you probably know it already. Except to say that it is, and this is not meant disparagingly at all, what my children approvingly call “an old man pub”. That is: it doesn’t have TV screens or music, live or recorded. And people of all ages, not just the elderly, can be found there. I wish the fireplace worked so it could be even cosier in winter but you can’t have everything and besides the place really comes into its own in summer, because of its large and well-placed beer garden. Space can be at a premium in Brighton, and even though the town is well-stocked with pubs – the second-highest density of them in the country, after somewhere in Liverpool – there aren’t that many with such a wide-open space, especially in West Hill.

Of course, what makes a pub isn’t just its space, or its look, but the people who run it, and Mel, who has been running the place for more years than I know or can count, has made it the place we love (hiring the right staff has a great deal to do with it; they are wonderful).

And then Covid happened; and other things; and their bills went up as their customer base went down. I don’t go there as often as I’d like to because of similar budgetary restraints but when I popped in there and heard what the mark-up on their energy bills was going to be I had an attack of the vapours and I wasn’t even going to be liable.

So the Battle’s future became up for grabs. The sum being asked that I heard to take it over was … large. And their energy bills had gone up fivefold. Things were looking bad. Few things are more depressing than the closure of a pub, more damaging to a locality. And the companies that own and run most of the pubs in this country are not known for their philanthropy.

Everything seemed to be up in the air until the very last minute. On the day I write this, though, the pub has not closed down, but has changed hands. 

I spoke to Mel about this: she says that the new managers – who have also taken over the Green Dragon (a pub with, shall we say, a history) – seem like the kind of people who won’t be changing the Battle for the worse any time soon. 

She’s going to miss the place but says we should give the new managers a chance. So let’s do just that.