…Today it rained sand.
Honest.
The wind had blown it right up from the Sahara and dropped it on us.
Cars were covered in it…

I seem to recall this occurring more than once in my childhood, but every time it happened it was as if snow had fallen on Christmas Day. People would step gingerly through their half-opened front doors, placing one foot on the ground as if unsure of its solidity, then teeter along the pavement, one hand pointing, the other clapped to the side of their face.

If it still happens now, it is not reported, let alone acknowledged. Like many extraordinary things from those times, it has become ordinary. The fanciful is now commonplace; the exceptional, mundane. All the hues of my childhood, even those the colour of sand, seem to have been heightened with the passing of time. Were the 1980s really that bright?