This year's made me a 'days of yore' bore

I VOWED that it would never happen. I was determined not to morph into a misery-guts banging on about how much better everything was in the olden days. I simply can’t stand those ancients who bleat about their blissful youth scrumping apples, being handed fragrant loaves by boys on bicycles and heavy petting in haystacks. I was confident I would never bore about growing up in 1970s suburbia because, in reality, power cuts and litter strikes were a big fat drag, telly was a test card for interminable hours and when Bouquet Of Barbed Wire came on, my parents wouldn’t even let me watch it.

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Those days of yore, in modern parlance, weren’t all that. Everything was shut on Sundays. Everyone watched Songs Of Praise because it was marginally less agonising than doing your homework.

Dads (and sometimes mums) smoked ferociously on long car journeys with the windows tightly shut. Children, unsurprisingly, were copiously car sick. Leisurewear hadn’t been invented, and we looked like mini versions of our grandparents.