…Still listening to Cat’s Whiskers radio programme. Did a plan of a house today…

This extract could have been written in 1936, not 1986.

Superficially, at this point I wasn’t having a childhood that was especially saturated with contemporary stuff.

I didn’t have (and never would have) my own computer or my own television set or video recorder. I wasn’t giving a toss about the latest trends or fads, though this wasn’t an active disinterest, more partial obliviousness.

I also wasn’t interested in collecting anything that was being published or manufactured at the time: comics, toys, stickers, action figures, magazines, anything. This would soon change, however.

Instead I had my favourite TV and radio programmes, my records, my books, and an apparently tireless fascination with making maps and plans. I don’t know if I ever completed my map of Leicester, but here I was, already getting stuck in to a plan of a house (not my house, just *a* house).

Looking back I guess I didn’t socialise much, either with neighbours or people I knew from school. But this didn’t bother me. Or if it did, I didn’t say.