Things were different in those days. More innocent. I suppose that you would say that I was naïve. But there was no internet. A lot fewer television channels and we had people like Mary Whitehouse to make sure that what we watched on the telly was clean and wholesome. Of course, there were ‘top shelf’ magazines in the newsagent’s shop but they were mostly bought by people passing through. No ‘local’ would be seen buying them! And the closest that schoolboys got to pornography was surreptitiously looking at the pictures of topless African women in the National Geographic magazines in the library.
I suppose that you could say that I was a bit of a tomboy. I enjoyed the outdoors and one of my favourite possessions was my bike. I used to ride it far and wide. I usually went riding with friends but, if no one else wanted to join me, I was quite happy to go riding on my own. Of course, there was less traffic on the roads in those days and, in any case, I tended to stick mainly to quieter country roads and forest tracks. With my Bartholomew half-inch to the mile map, I had the freedom of the county!