Apollos and atom bombs

"During my formative years we were lucky enough to live 50 yards from the park. Most nights we'd have compulsory rugby practice with my dad and brother and anyone else around.

"Rain, snow or ice, we'd have our noses ground into the mud and traipse home in the dark, plastered from head to the toes we could often no longer feel.

"Curiously, mum never greeted us with a packet of Daz or Omo, cooing "Love 'em" like on TV. "We never realised dad's dream of playing for Wales but it toughened us up for life's knocks.

"Towards autumn the kids in our street did Penny for the Guy or extra housework to raise cash for fireworks. By late October we'd have a huge chest full of Apollos, Atom bombs and rockets.

"Plans for our street's bonfire party were drawn up with military precision in our den, hidden in tall weeds by the railway embankment.

"We got our parents to charge for soup and jacket spuds and built a bonfire as big as a wigwam. Our bonfire parties were always a big success.

"Later, as young teenagers, we'd cycle out to the countryside and make mazes from bales or camp in a borrowed play tent. At dawn we shivered with cold and fear as bullocks stampeded around us like a scene from How the West Was Won. We were John Wayne, Tom Sawyer and Robin Hood rolled into one.

"We couldn't repel an alien invasion like today's microkids. We didn't trawl the net, unless we were newting.

We didn't have virtual reality either, just the plain kind."