Born on 1 January 1950

If you were born in 1950, you arrived in a Britain that was still very much shaking off the grey soot of the war, yet there was this wonderful, quiet hum of hope in the air. I remember the smog clinging to the brickwork, but inside the kitchen, things were looking up because they finally increased the tea ration—thank God for that, eh? We’d sit by the wireless listening to *The Archers* for the very first time, or perhaps humming along to Anton Karas’s "The Harry Lime Theme" while the coal fire spat and crackled in the grate.

If you were lucky enough to have a telly, you were huddled around a tiny screen watching *Andy Pandy* wave his little hand, but mostly we were out at the Saturday morning pictures watching *The Blue Lamp*. The weather that year was a proper mixed bag, wasn't it? We had those biting February snows, then a June so scorching the tarmac bubbled.

Kids were out in the street playing with tin whistles or skipping ropes, blissfully unaware of the headlines about the new Princess Anne or the dread of the Korean War. We lived for a Smith’s crisp with the little blue twist of salt, washed down with a lukewarm Tizer, feeling like kings of the cobblestones.