Kemp Town, as elsewhere in this city and across the country, is losing its pubs. The latest to call time for the last time is the I Go Inn in Rock Street, a pub that I first visited in 1971 when it was called The Hervey Arms.

In those days, the pub was run by a former British army officer, Charles, and his Austrian wife, Friedl. Regarded as a bohemian haunt, it was the meeting place for the counter-culture society of seemingly perpetual students who inhabited the surrounding flats in grand Regency houses in the years prior to gentrification.

The men had long hair. The women wore Paisley kaftans. We listened to Pink Floyd. We talked vaguely of revolution. We drank warm beer. Roll-ups were de rigueur and, on occasion, one could smell the sickly sweet aroma of cannabis. It was a nightly party. I have fond memories of the pulchritudinous barmaid, Alison - daughter of the vicar of St Mark's church - dancing on the bar. I can't remember why, but it was symbolic of the relaxed atmosphere on those nights when Friedl was absent or tipsy enough to stifle her disciplinary reflexes.

At some stage, in the late 80s maybe, when the beards were shaved, the hair was cut, the kaftans were hanging in second-hand clothes shops in Kensington Gardens, the students had finally gone to work, the flats were being acquired by the settled middle class, and Charles and Friedl had moved on, the Hervey went into decline.

As so often, the pub's revival involved a new name. So The Hervey - the family name of the 1820s landowner, the 1st Marquess of Bristol - became the I Go Inn.

The annoying change of name also saw a change in the clientele. Two other nearby pubs, the notorious Whitehawk Inn, in what's now laughingly called Lower Whitehawk, and The Clyde in Bristol Gardens - a superb pool venue under its Irish landlord whose name escapes me - had been closed down (both, sadly, due to violence).

The Bush on Arundel Road staggered on through a series of landlords after one of them, outwardly a rather staid figure, was so outraged by the financial demands of his brewery bosses that he smashed every bit of furniture and then set the curtains alight before doing a vanishing act.

So the I Go Inn became a favourite venue for the residents of Whitehawk and a sprinkling of people who, for one reason or another, preferred it to The Rock, situated immediately opposite.

The landlord for many years, through the 90s and beyond, was David Casey, a mercurial Irishman who seemed to enjoy having public rows with his wife, addressing each other from opposite ends of the bar.

Casey was loved by his regular customers. He created a congenial atmosphere, coaxing everyone to learn the words of The Fields of Athenry, the Irish folk ballad about a man sentenced to transportation during the famine for stealing food from his starving family.

I don't think too many of the raucous drinkers who belted out "Low lie the fields of Athenry, where once we watched the small birds fly" realised the anti-British sentiments behind the song. No matter.

The pub attracted a middle class group on Sunday lunchtimes, most of them linked to Chris Jackson and the late Ben Cruikshank, the men who ran the Rock Street deli, Jacksons, the shop that was the precursor to the popular Kemp Town Deli and Bistro in St Georges Road.

By the time Casey gave up, the writing was on the wall for the I Go. There was a brief flurry when it was managed by Rob Teagle, a terrific guy I still see in Kemp Town, who taught me how to play pool properly (though I think I've since forgotten his sage advice).

But Rob couldn't take the hassle. There were some very difficult customers. And, gradually, hardly any customers of any kind.

The Rock Inn is popular again. The New Bush appears to be flourishing. The I Go became the I Went. I looked in occasionally last year and saw only a couple of lonely drinkers. It must have been losing its owner money for ages.

But the memories are there. Now, I wonder where Alison Paton is nowadays. And can she still shake those hips?