SHE is absolutely NOT retiring. Brenda Robinson is quite clear about that. “I’ve never said retirement,” she says. “It’s not a word I’ve used.”

But if retirement is a taboo, it doesn’t change the result. Tomorrow night, one way or another, will mark the end of an era in York pub circles.

For after nearly three decades behind the same bar, and having served millions of drinks to her loyal customers, one of the city’s longest-serving landladies, Brenda Robinson, is finally hanging up her towel.

Brenda, 64, has been running the little Slip Inn, in Clementhorpe, since 1981, and has overseen a generation of change in her industry and her neighbourhood.

The old Terry’s buildings behind her pub have been replaced by flats; many of her old-time regulars have died or moved; and the floodwaters have come and gone ad infinitum.

Control of the trade, meanwhile, has swung from the breweries on the one hand to independent companies on the other, somehow bypassing the very people meant to benefit most – the publicans themselves.

Within her pub, the price of beer has risen gradually from the bygone days of 40p a pint, while Brenda can still recall the howls of protest when the juke box switched from 15 songs for a pound to ten.

Even now, the machine still offers an impressive seven songs for a quid and it will no doubt be in full swing tomorrow when customers past and present gather to say their farewells.

“There are so many great memories in this place that it would be difficult to pull anything out,” Brenda says.

“We have just had some really good laughs. I will miss the customers, but hopefully we will still see them.”

Before moving to the Slip, Brenda ran the show at three other York pubs between 1973 and 1981, starting with the Burton Stone in Bootham. She and her then husband had both served there, and they saw it as the pinnacle of their aspirations at the time, says Brenda.

But other pubs were more suitable for a young family, and they moved on to The Clifton in Water Lane and then The Mitre, off Shipton Road. Brenda says she has rarely returned to those pubs as a punter, except with darts or dominoes teams, but has not ruled out popping into the Slip when it changes hands.

“With the other ones I was only there for a year to two and a half years,” she says. “This could be different I think.”

Brenda has built up many friends among locals and from the nearby holiday campsite off Terry Avenue. They will join other customers, past and present, tomorrow – but there remains a chance that the guest of honour herself could end up missing it.

Brenda’s daughter is due to give birth any day now, and Brenda says she would quite happily be at the hospital instead of the pub come Sunday night – meaning that, however much her customers may hope otherwise, she may yet slip out of the Slip Inn for a final time in peace.

• THE White Horse in Bootham is hosting a pub quiz in aid of the Haiti earthquake victims, from 8.30pm on Sunday night. Prizes include £50 and a gallon of beer. All welcome.

• THE revolving door has spun again in Micklegate.

I wrote last summer about The Scene, which had opened in the old Campana restaurant premises, offering the ultimate in TV dinners.

The bar/restaurant had flat-screen televisions on the walls and regularly showed live sport. I heard a few times that it had concerns over whether its licence allowed it to serve alcohol without food though, and the place has now been taken over and turned into a Mexican restaurant called Los Locos.

Joe Ferraioli and Eduardo Caetano are in charge, and say they will also offer 30 different types of cocktail and the “best cocktails in town”.

Gavin Aitchison is Yorkshire columnist of the year.