THERE was a time when laughter and music flowed as fast as the foaming ale down at the Irish National League Club, York's oldest Working Men's Club in Speculation Street off Navigation Road.

Alas no more. From Monday the beer taps, like the club's cash, will have run dry. The INL is already in the hands of the receiver and Easter Monday is the last day of trading.

The dwindling band of loyal Leaguers will have to find another watering hole.

The club's lease has been sold to a local businessman and few believe it will ever again ring to the merry mirth and music which has lured members and their partners to great nights out - with turns - since it was formed 112 years ago, largely by the immigrant Irish workers who congregated down Walmgate early last century.

The sad fact is that not enough members used the club.

Even sadder in my view is that in recent times, the club's committees have shown all the vision of a pit pony by not keeping pace with changing times and offering the sort of attractions to make members want to drink there.

Now, the speculation down Speculation Street is that the club, and its prime site just inside the bar walls, will eventually be turned into flats, as seems to be the case all over York these days.

Witness that much-loved and missed City Arms club just off Paragon Street, which is already in the process of going the same way.

Those old club thoroughbreds who formed and nurtured the INL must be spinning in their graves. Down the years it buzzed with fun and effort from its rugby, football, snooker, table tennis and darts teams - not to mention the synchronised underwater basket-weaving squad.

So this is a wake-up call to all working men's clubs in York - get your act together or you could finish up as a drive-thru kebab fast food outlet or flats.

Life member Reg Cross has been having a couple of bottles of beer a day at the INL for years.

Now he has to stop three times to catch his breath to walk the couple of hundred yards from home to club.

Defiantly he has decided to get himself a "chariot of fire" so he can scoot out for a few pints when the club shuts.

That's the sort of spirit that got the club going in the first place.

Meanwhile, pity Gordon and Madge Stevenson, of Navigation Road. It appears they have lost the £40 deposit they put down to hire the club to celebrate Gordon's 50th on April 20 along with 80 friends and family.

And they are not the only ones...

Yesterday morning, the club's cleaner was full of concern. "What's going to happen to the Hoover?" she asked.

Monday should be made a 'National' day of mourning!

- There is a wise man in York who has demonstrated the same true spirit of canniness which guided an avaricious Aladdin to choose as his first of three wishes granted by the lamp genie "to have a million more wishes".

He was among 1,000 jobless people in the area aged over 40 approached last week in a survey conducted into ageism by York Job Centre, the York and North Yorkshire Learning and Skills Council and Yorkshire Forward, the regional development agency.

Question: What sort of training do you need us to lay on in order to help you find an employer?

Our wag's answer: Could you please provide us training to make us younger?

Watch out for the new DIY plastic surgery classes at a college near you...

- OUR cartoonist Wolf tells a great 'rabbit' story- and swears it's true!

His mate has a fierce dog that goes for anything in sight.

One day the dog arrived home with a very dead rabbit locked in its jaws.

Mortified, Wolf's friend, who knew his neighbours were away on holiday, shot down to a pet shop, bought a lookalike rabbit and gently eased it in the 'run' his neighbour had built.

The neighbours returned home, the weeks passed and no more was heard.

About a month later, Wolf's mate was chatting to his neighbour over the fence and idly dropped in: "How's that rabbit of yours getting along?"

"Remarkably well" replied the neighbour.

"Just before we went away we thought it had died, so we buried it in the garden. Imagine our surprise when we found it had dug its way out and got back into its run when we got home!"

- YOU may have encountered one of the friendly canvassers in the newly-opened Sainsburys at Monks Cross, York, who ask you about your impressions of the new store as you leave.

Andrew Tessier, retail manager for York Castle Museum, was shopping there and overheard this answer to the question by a little old lady being interviewed: "Ooh! It's so lovely I'd like to live here."

The canvasser was gobsmacked.

Updated: 09:34 Saturday, March 30, 2002