“Lizards, snakes, frogs and newts. We were custodians of the hedgerows, the waterlogged bomb site and the waste ground.”

(not suitable for children)   In which we kids wandered fields and woods far beyond the jurisdiction of parents and neighbours and learned from each other scary facts about the taboo subject of ‘dodgy men’.

  In which my grandfather plays an inscrutable hand of cards, stokes engines on Channel Islands paddle steamers until the age of 65, smokes a lot of Capstan Full Strength cigarettes and entrances a small boy by constructing a fully-rigged ship in a bottle