It led me on to thinking about drinks, especially, non alcoholic ones, and how badly we are served by the present pub set up. There was a time, it is true, when most pubs had beer, spirits and lemonade plus a few bottles labelled lime, blackcurrant or orange which they sloshed into the gin. There would also be a bottle of port and one of sherry and that was it. Ask for a coke and you were marked out as a nancy boy so few dared and persevered with their mild or bitter..

Ladies drank out of special glasses if they did have a beer and ice in drinks was unheard of. When lager first appeared in British pubs, it was bottled and served in camp glasses. Some pubs started to put ice into the beer to give it a chilled continental feel but soft drinks still made little progress..

Today ask for a orange juice and you mostly get about two inches of Britvic in the bottom of a half pint glass and enough ice to sink the titanic. Ask for coke and you get a watery liquid squirted out of a miniature petrol pump nozzle and again served in a glass full of ice. I'm told it's because most soft drinks in pubs come from a single. producer owned by a consortium of all the main brewers. There is little incentive therefore to try something different or to try to innovate..

Perhaps this is an area where gay bars could take the lead and offer a range of more adventurous non alcoholic drinks. First there is a whole range of flavours already out there such as Vimto, Tizer, Dandelion and Burdock, American ice cream soda even Irn Bru. One pub I patronised in Wolverhampton years ago used to serve Guinness and Vimto. It probably explains why so many butch guys there enjoyed laying face down after a night on the beer..

Then there is fresh orange juice, not the stuff Britvic use. Some dutch pubs serve it by throwing oranges into a machine and making the stuff on the spot. Why not a fruit punch with mixed juices and a sprig of something floating in it. After all drinking beer after using a fruit flavoured condom for a bit of oral in the cottage, does give the beer a funny taste or so I'm told..

I never thought I would ever see water being drunk in a pub but there you go. Even the straight guys drink it these days. I suppose as lager gets weaker and bottle spring water is being revealed as more polluted than tap water there won't be much to choose between them. In the meantime mine's a Becks and Tizer and don't forget the ice cube..

(This was written before the Alchopop boom where everyone who is everyone is drinking revolting, sickly sweet fruit drinks laced with aftershave. What will it all lead to ?)