A recent Saturday night out in Oxford brought me an entertaining engagement with the old and new.

Old came first with an hour or so in one of Oxford’s – if not Britain’s – most characterful pubs, the King’s Arms, in Holywell Street.

A favourite of mine over five decades, the KA possesses a timeless appeal, its back bar especially, which when I first knew it was controversially unavailable to women.

Demonstrations by justly offended feminists were as common an event as irruptions by student streakers in the mid-1970s when I drank with some of the long-gone worthies immortalised in black-and-white photographs lining the panelled walls.

I ate there regularly then, summoned to the trough by the calling cry – “Cod mornay!” – of the legendary Doreen.

The sort of honest pub-grub offered then can still be enjoyed today, bangers and mash, perhaps, or liver, bacon and onions.

On our Saturday evening visit I reacquainted myself with it in the shape of a game pie, rammed full of venison, partridge and pheasant beneath a puff pastry crust. Rosemarie had faggots, mash and mushy peas.

Next came new, in another visit to Turtle Bay restaurant and cocktail bar, which brings tastes of Jamaica to the heart of Oxford.

This excellent establishment has helped in the transformation of Friar’s Entry, beside Debenhams, from a gloomy thoroughfare to be traversed with trepidation into a buzzy precinct bedecked with lights.

The opening party last autumn was a humdinger of a do, at which we had a chance to sample some of its classic West Indian food, including curry goat, Caribbean fish curry and, of course, jerk chicken.

My visits since have been more concerned with the consumption of cocktails. There is a fabulous range of these priced at £6.95 and offered till 7pm and again after 10pm at two for the price of one. Beachcombers Zombie, with four rums, absinthe, bitters and pineapple juice, is my favourite.