Pete Brown: Soft drinks - 30p? Or £3.40? Your guess is as good as mine…

Sadly man cannot live by beer alone. We're all aware of beer's manifold health benefits, but when beer drinking is both a personal vocation and a professional necessity, it becomes clear that you can have too much of a good thing. This is why I spend large parts of the first quarter of every year on a puritanical anti-binge that includes no alcohol for a month.

But I still visit pubs. And so, every January, the joie de vivre I feel when I leap out of bed each morning with no toxins in my body is enhanced by the prospect of my annual acquaintance with the joys of adult soft drinks.

Let's skip over the commercial brands in the fridge - I'm detoxing, remember, so I'm not up for ingesting enough sugar in one swig to dissolve my teeth and send me running around the pub shrieking until someone brings me down with a Ritalin-tipped dart.

No, my detox tipple is a pint of lime and soda water, expertly mixed from the gun or, if you're feeling posh, with lime cordial from a bottle. As a drink it's the same in any pub, but when I come to pay for it, the variety in the price is a constant source of wonder - right now it could cost me anything from 30p a pint to a somewhat less credit crunch-friendly £3.40.

And there's no rule that helps predict which end of the scale it'll be: I've paid towards the lower end in gastropubs and I've had three quid extorted from me in down-at-heel boozers. Each licensee seemingly has his own law by which he sets the price.

When I'm forced to pay much more than £2 for a drink that costs only a few pence, I feel like I've been mugged. A red mist descends. I develop a passionate hatred for the pub in question, and plot grisly revenge. I perceive the licensee as a venal, Scrooge-like figure who's probably cutting corners wherever he can, so I start to suspect the quality of his food and hygiene.

I think he only cares about squeezing every last penny from his customers, and doesn't give a stuff about long-term loyalty because there'll always be another mug along in a minute.

I dream of his pub burning to the ground, this being the only way to rid it of the plague of locusts and rain of blood, and of the landlord weeping in the ruins, everything lost, while I stand over him nodding sagely.

OK, so maybe I take things a little bit too much to heart. But I'm pretty sure the tone is representative of pub-goers in general.

By contrast, if I'm charged a quid or less, I imagine the licensee as benevolent, caring, responsible, but most of all, an enlightened businessman, one who understands that if you look after your customers they'll come back again and again.

It'd only be a small detail, something I forget when I'm back on the beer.

But every time someone talks to me about a great pub or a terrible pub, it tends to be the small details that create the greatest impression.