As you know, Richard, I grew up in Pinner, lived there from when I was six months old until I was 27, when I moved all the way to Ruislip. My Dad worked in Edgware, just down the road from Stanmore, my ex-husband grew up in Willesden...so I know Middlesex very well.

I was born in the mid 50s and at no time was where I grew up a riotous place where couples were having sex on the street, in the park or even throwing their keys in, behind closed doors.

My teenage years were very happy, apart from my parents marriage going through hell when my mother imploded, probably in part due to the sexual abuse she had kept locked away inside her for so very long and which stayed there until she was around 60 years old when she suddenly spoke of it, as I've described above.

I went to the roughest school in the area and none of my friends had the kind of teenage years that you seem to remember either.

We'd spent hot summer days watching the cricket in the park, boys and girls together, talking about everything under the sun...Often we'd go to the park itself and while away the hours on the Witches Hat Roundabouts, the long swings and all the other things which older kids could also play on, unlike today's park for toddlers and little children only..

We'd play tennis, go swimming, go round to each other's houses for coffee, tea and chats, listen to music....Holidays shared with friends in the Lake District, with their parents too, beaches and laughter...

And Enid Blyton as well, Wind in the Willows, The Secret Garden, The Railway Children, Love Story and so much more...

I bought a compendium of The Twins At Mallory Towers a few years back, at a car boot sale and sat in the sun reconnecting with the characters Enid created...The Famous Five, The Secret Seven...and of course the books of Swallows & Amazons too, along with the films..

Happy days, surrounded by family and friends..

Older days of going to gigs with friends, where the boys still opened the doors for the girls, where we girls (and very few boys) EVER got drunk....and women rarely even walked into a pub on their own either, usually they were always with a group,which more often than not, was made up of boys and girls...

Our heads weren't filled with video horrors, or computer killing games..We dreamed of our future, knowing it was attainable, to get married, to have a home and a family..unlike so many young people today who feel they will NEVER have a home of their own or ever be able to support a family...just constant working in a world where there is no support for them in harsh times....

We didn't long to 'escape' from home, for home was home and we were happy there...Of course there WERE unhappy families, always have been, always will be, but in the main, most of my friends remained at home until they got married and very few went to University, unlike today where it's almost compulsory to assume that's where you go next on The Corporate Conveyer Belt of Life and Lunacy...

So, whether you choose to believe it or not, those days DID exist...and they existed for very many of us. Not all, I appreciate, but for the majority, back then..