WHEN was the last time you wrapped yourself around a pint or a glass of wine down at your local? Last night? A couple of days ago? Or, more likely, months back?

The local, as one of the centres of the community, seems to have had its day. And more's the pity.

A night out in the pub or the club with the wife or girlfriend or to meet a few mates was a ritual for many of us not long ago.

There was generally something going on amid the smoky haze.

A darts match, a quiz, an artiste, some charity "do", friendly banter, heated debate; very occasionally a flying bottle.

It's a lot different these days. How many pubs - and clubs - have closed in Darwen in the past few years?

Some have been bulldozed; others lie empty, two or three have become restaurants or houses, one or two others are on their last legs.

Remember the Vale in the Grimshaw Street dip? How about the Rising Sun and the Horseshoe down t' bottom end.

Can anyone remember the Foundry? And what was that Lion pub called on the Chapels hill?

The Top Con was at the heart of the local community till it closed a few years ago.

But the heart just wasn't beating strongly enough and it couldn't afford to carry on losing money like so many.

I've had a jar in them all over the years. And in a lot more.

But, apart from the Albion of happy and decadent memory, the closure for the past few months of Uncle Jack's pub in the centre of Lower Darwen had saddened me most.

Empty and forlorn with a boarded up front window; dusty and fly-blown with peeling paint and rotting wood.

I don't know what Jack Walker would have made of the state of the pub that carries his name.

But I know what former landlord Jim Hughes thinks about it.

I asked him - almost as soon as he arrived back in Darwen from his holiday home in Cyprus.

Jim got Walker's permission to rename the Swan after him.

He ran it for more than 13 years with his partner Eileen till a couple of years ago. On match days at Ewood it was heaving.

Jim wasn't everybody's favourite uncle. He's hard and calls it as he sees it.

His great love was, and still is, horse racing and some of the top players used to call in, among them jockey Jimmy Fortune and trainer Kevin Ryan, who won well over 20 races for him.

I remember trainer Steve Kettlewell calling in one lunchtime with money which Jim had won on his chaser Good Hand up at Ayr the previous afternoon, but that's a story for another day.

"It's a crying shame," said Jim as he looked at his old haunt.

I'd like to say there was a tear in his eye. But anybody who knows him just wouldn't believe it.