Bar Hop: Still plenty to be chuffed about at the old Locomotive

My late mother had unusual friends, ranging from Sea Point drag queens called Lady Peterson to other single mothers who relentlessly smoked multicoloured Sobranie Cocktails.

They would sit around in a thick fog with dry martinis, fluttering their long false eyelashes at gorgeous men. She also had fashionable friends who slept across the colour bar.

Then there were the rather ordinary Uncle Dougie and Aunty Moira, who introduced me at an impressionable age (I was five) to the Locomotive Hotel. Both spoke with Port Elizabeth Athol Fugard accents, both had that Hello and Goodbye vibe about them.

He looked like Sid James and she like Barbara Windsor, the duo from the Carry On movies. She had a tall blonde bouffant and huge breasts, which she would flash at men at the bar counter when she thought we weren't looking. I saw, and I loved her ribaldness.

Uncle Dougie was an electrician, she a receptionist, and they loved their tipple.

On rainy Saturdays they would take their many kids, and me, in their 1968 Morris Minor station wagon to soccer matches in Green Point.

The youngsters would squeeze in the rear; in front, the ashtray overflowing, Springbok Radio blaring, Uncle Dougie sped along. After the game, they hurried off to the highlight of the day: The Locomotive Hotel.

Once there, Uncle Dougie had to race twice around Salt River Circle, tyres screeching, for our amusement. The hotel had a dining room where the children got into trouble. I was nosy, and slipped back into the bar to watch the grown-ups.

Although it was the time of apartheid, the crowds were often racially mixed - tough and warm-hearted working-class people. They had large personalities, mainly fishermen, tradesmen and railway workers: steam locomotive drivers, stokers and shunters. The women were wanton, the men ruttish.

Uncle Dougie and Aunty Moira died in old age. Over the decades I've kept returning to this hotel and pub, built in 1937.

For years, in the corner, there was the same old jukebox, and I would play songs that the two of them liked: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by The Platters, or These Boots are Made for Walkin' by Nancy Sinatra.

One night, a few years ago, there was a lovers' tiff, a triangle, a jealous boyfriend who set his girlfriend's locked room door alight. The fire destroyed part of the building, and I was gutted.

Fortunately, they restored it, and it still has its pulse and timbre. There is a snooker table, cosy chairs, a sweeping dark-wood bar counter, one-arm bandits, and the new jukebox takes a mere R1 for a song.

Nowadays you can listen to Katy Perry's Roar - I sometimes do. Often I sit and soak in gentle memories of years that have flashed past in this place, and that makes me happy.

• Locomotive Hotel, Durham Avenue, Salt River, 021-447-2479