My favourite public house is called The Eagle Over Water, possibly because it's a few streets away from both a zoo and a canal. It is within walking distance of my house and yet, because it's down an alleyway, the debris of cans, discarded underwear, torn condoms and elderly gentlemen sprawled out on discarded mattresses fails to shake the general impression that this is a middle-class area.

The Eagle Over Water was originally three houses owned by Lord Southampton who, in 1867, knocked them into one. Four doors down is a building, now a Jewish museum, which was once a factory making wooden legs for the unfortunates of the Crimean war. I mention this on account of Mr Stone, of whom more later.

If asked why one favours a particular drinking establishment it would seem natural to put the beer first. To my mind, such a mild relative of the mulberry plant is utterly inferior to the magical, electric, mind-bending malt-based mixture called whisky. Hop drinkers wear woolly caps and shabby trainers. Serious drinkers sport homburg hats, overcoats with velvet lapels and shiny shoes.

In my public house there is a definite class division between the occupants who are holding mugs and those who raise glass tumblers to their lips. And then there is the general atmosphere, a word which, according to the dictionary, is defined as a gaseous mist enveloping a celestial planet. One should not take this too seriously; gas there may be in the public bar, but it's hardly of the heavenly kind.

The pub has three main rooms, none of which are particularly outstanding. The interior was modernised in 1984 and is not yet sufficiently strange enough to be memorable, though the nicotine-stained ceilings are fast becoming worthy of comment. I usually sit in the largest room, whose doors, on summer days, are propped open to give a view of the world. There is no better recreation for the mind than the study of hurrying mankind.

Mr Stone never goes further than the plastic-topped table adjacent to the gents; he has only one leg. According to Mrs Moon, a Saturday barmaid, he's a victim of passion, not war. Fifty years ago, walking to meet Dolly, his sweetheart, he saw her across the road in the arms of a strange man. He ran forward immediately, just as the Queen's horses, en route to Regent's Park, cantered into Parkway. Dolly screamed; Mr Stone fainted; a horse named Infidel stamped all over him. I've never spoken to Mr Stone, or he to me. I did ask Mrs Moon if he and Dolly had got together again, but she said she'd never bothered to ask.

At the back of the pub is something of a yard dressed up as a garden. One can sit out there and watch the landlord's children chase pigeons. As we are no longer allowed to smoke tobacco indoors I often venture outside to indulge the habit.

There is a statue of a man in a tight waistcoat looking up at the branch of a tree on which a metal eagle perches. The landlord said he thought the waistcoated man was a servant of Lord Southampton, but he couldn't be sure. He passed me on to a man with a ginger beard who engaged me in a fascinating, if puzzling conversation.

He was, he said, a great admirer of the works of a writer called George Orwell whom he had met in this very same pub. According to Orwell, the whole foundation on which our existence rests is the ever-fleeting present. It lies in the very nature of our existence to take the form of constant motion, and to offer no possibility of our ever attaining the rest and peace for which we are always striving. It is not important for a man to be happy, for life has never been anything more than a present moment, forever vanishing. I nodded a lot, as one does when attempting to understand what was being said.

I asked the ginger man if he'd ever met any other writers in The Eagle Over Water, but he said he could only tell me if I bought him another drink of Bell's. I did, but when I returned from the bar, he'd vanished.

But now it's time to reveal something that the attentive and disillusioned reader will probably have guessed already. There is no such place as The Eagle Over Water. That is to say, there may be a pub of that name, but I don't know it. I would dearly love to find a drinking place with pigeons billing and cooing in the backyard and educated men talking about the futility of life. Most of all, I would be happy to spend my evenings drinking in an old-fashioned room with a fire blazing in the grate, several sweet women knitting baby shawls, and definitely no disruptive television. I should be glad to hear of it, even though its name were something as prosaic as The Dublin Castle, The Spread Eagle or The Princess Beatrice.

The Moon Under Water: George Orwell's ideal pub

My favourite public house, The Moon Under Water, is only two minutes from a bus stop, but it is on a side-street, and drunks and rowdies never seem to find their way there.

Its clientele, though fairly large, consists mostly of "regulars" who occupy the same chair every evening and go there for conversation as much as for the beer. The thing that most appeals to me about The Moon Under Water is what people call its "atmosphere".

To begin with, its whole architecture and fittings are uncompromisingly Victorian ... everything has the solid, comfortable ugliness of the 19th century. It is always quiet enough to talk [and] the barmaids know most of their customers by name. Unlike most pubs, The Moon Under Water sells tobacco as well as cigarettes, and it also sells aspirins and stamps, and is obliging about letting you use the telephone.

You cannot get dinner at The Moon Under Water, but there is always the snack counter where you can get liver-sausage sandwiches, mussels (a speciality), cheese [and] pickles.

They are particular about their drinking vessels at The Moon Under Water, and never, for example, make the mistake of serving a pint of beer in a handleless glass.

The great surprise of The Moon Under Water is its garden. On summer evenings there are family parties, and you sit under the plane trees having beer or draught cider to the tune of delighted squeals from children.

Many as are the virtues of The Moon Under Water, I think that the garden is its best feature. The Moon Under Water is my ideal of what a pub should be ...

• This is an edited extract from the Evening Standard, 9 February 1946