City pub was a place to listen and learn

IT’S always sad to see what was once one of your favourite pubs derelict and unloved - even worse to see it demolished altogether.

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The Good Companions in Plymouth called last orders for the last time 15 years ago. It was knocked down in 2017 and one day soon it will become much-needed homes for the city.

It's a weed-strewn piece of flat ground surrounded by wire fences now. Back in the day, though, it was one of the bastions of that great and almost-forgotten ritual of after-work drinks.

I was working at the Sunday Independent on the outskirts of the city, on and off from 1978 to about 1981, punctuated by spells in the paper's various outlying district offices around Devon.

We were wet behind the ears in newspaper terms, comprising a bunch of worldly-wise graduates from universities all over the country who joined us local school-leavers to learn the great secrets of the newspaper industry.

Not least of these was shorthand, at which we all accelerated to a breathless 100 words per minute before being handed a certificate and knowing we would never have to etch indecipherable squiggles at such velocity ever again.