Many years back I was in primary school, I was nine. Our neighbour was one of my teachers and as luck would have it her son was in my class and a nasty piece of work. His idea of fun was to run up behind someone and if it was a boy hit them hard on the back of the head, if it was a girl he would put his hand up their skirt and try to grab their knickers he never got into trouble as his mother protected him. One day I saw him running up behind me so I turned and hit him, “tapped his claret" good and proper, after that his mother did everything she could to punish me, up to and including the slipper.

That winter (1963) was very cold, so one night I spent the night getting up and every quarter hour I sprayed her car with water. In the morning I was exhausted but her car had a huge layer of ice over the top, frozen solid about two inches thick. I do wonder if my parents ever realised why I was in such a rush to get to school next day when normally it took a bomb to get me out of bed.