Thanks to Gillian Kirby for this outpouring . . . [Warning: contains lewd reference to Mini-Milks]

'When my friend Joanne and I were about 13-14, our
favourite game when there was nothing better to do was to put on her sisters' hideous 1980s bridesmaid
dresses and act out the "who will buy these pretty
roses?" scene from Oliver! Why? I have absolutely no
idea, but it was more fun than sitting at the bus stop
waiting for tracksuited youths to walk past which was
about all there was to do in Blackburn in 1996. (I went
on to sing in the tenor choir in the university G&S
society, so it must have prepared me in some way.)

'Our other favourite pastimes were making "radio
stations", which for some reason always seemed to have the "special guest" Deirdre Barlow because it was the only impression we could do, and a fake phone-in;
listening to older sisters' bad 80s records (Modern Romance and Dennis Waterman), sitting in the park eating Mini-Milks (which "looked rude" if you sucked on them a certain way, apparently) and watching bad 50s musicals. We were strange people. It's almost
sad how quickly we turned to sitting in pubs
pretending to drink lager, fancying ugly boys and in my
case taking to crimson hair dye and scowling a
lot . . . Kids nowadays are probably out injecting horse
tranquilisers for fun, or something.

'Reading about the comics you wrote reminded me of
when I were a lass and made my own magazines all the time. I was too young to know about fanzines, so they were just headlines cut out of Smash Hits and
hand-written articles about The Wonder Stuff or
whoever I liked at the time.

'I had to be taken out of reading and later English lessons at primary school to work on my own as I learned to read very young, so spent one term designing, drawing and writing a recipe book for American pilgrims in the 1600s. I'm not sure why my teachers felt this was particularly useful when I was ten - and I still haven't tried any of the recipes - but it was great fun, and allowed me to hone my skills of making "parchment" by rubbing a wet teabag over white A4 paper. If I could only find a way to turn that into a career; sadly paper-aging skills are not much called upon these days but it could be worth a try to get my CV noticed!

'According to my sister, my favourite band as a
toddler was Mike and The Mechanics. I don't think I'd
ever heard them, just liked the sound of the name. i
used to be obsessed with Teletext too, especially
Digitiser on Oracle/Channel 4.'

FOR ALL YOUR MIKE AND THE MECHANICS AND GENESIS NEEDS

A once-in-a-lifetime memory from Peter Hughes, who works as a librarian in Summerhill, Co Down . . .

‘I was born on 26th March 1967 (Easter Sunday – my mother dropped me on my head two weeks later so I ended up back in hospital again for a few days though I don’t think there was any lasting damage) so the time period covered by your book roughly corresponds with my own childhood.

‘I grew up in the town of Newry in Northern Ireland during the height of the ‘troubles’. It was just like any other working class town anywhere in Britain (apart from the noise and large military presence) and like other kids in these areas, we played football every day after school in our street. The were a lot fewer cars to contend with in those days so we normally had most of the street to ourselves. One particular afternoon, myself and my best mate at the time, Martin Gill, were aimlessly kicking the ball up and down the street to each other when we noticed a large brown Jaguar car coming towards us.

‘It pulled up right outside my next door neighbour’s house, little old Mrs Toner. Who’s car was it? we thought. We’d never seen such a flashy motor. We both thought we were dreaming when we saw who emerged. It was none other than the ‘towering’ figure of Pat Jennings – goalkeeper extraordinaire who had recently joined Arsenal from Spurs. He was the biggest person we had ever laid eyes on. Turns out that Mrs Toner is his mother-in-law !!!

‘Pat himself is from Newry (though we had never expected to see him in the flesh) and was home for an international match. It was back in the days of the old ‘Home Championship’ which England nearly always won (except for one year, 1980 I think, when Northern Ireland won it and Stiff Little Fingers appeared on Top of the Pops wearing Irish football tops).

‘Anyway after about 10 minutes or so Pat appeared at Toner’s front door and came over to us. I thought he was going to tell us to bugger off and get away from his car (we’d been looking in through the windows and bouncing the ball off it). Nothing of the sort. He said, “Fancy a wee kick around, lads?”, in the deepest voice imaginable. We spent all afternoon taking penalties against the great Pat Jennings and even managed to put one or two past him (though I don’t think he was really trying his best).

‘The gates to the builders’ yard across the road served as nets and my proudest moment came when my dad arrived home from work in time to see me put one into the top corner past the big fella. From that day forward we had a new-found respect for Mrs Toner and lived in hope of another visit from her son-in-law, though it wasn't to be. She moved away a few years later and we never seen Pat again. The street isn't there either now. It got flattened a few years ago to accommodate the latest road widening/traffic calming scheme. Though I'll never forget that June afternoon.’