my commiserations. i have a friend in a village near bath whose local has gone and the other pub in the village is on a shoogly nail. he's lived there 37 years and has done more than his share of the drinking necessary. he is now considering moving and who could blame him? i would go crazy without a couple of nights (more if i could afford it) in the pub, it's a mental health issue! it's tragic to see a dead village and unsettling to walk through so many - what are all the (mostly older) people doing in there? a local pub is one of the things in life that is seriously vital to our heritage. why have we -as a country- let so much that is good about our lives be taken from us? we can just blame the governments, maybe we are just crap.