You know when you were little and you went to your Grandparent’s house and listened for hours about what life was like, ‘in their day’? They used tin baths, outside loos and they didn’t have a telly. It sounded alien, especially the telly bit. I used to spend hours wondering just what they did to fill their time. Well, I suppose families were bigger back then.

It never occurred to me that stories I tell to my kids would make me appear just as archaic. I’m only 35, but it’s happened already. I was telling my 6 year old the story about how we didn’t have a telephone in our house when we were growing up. There was a phone booth at the end of the street that took 2 pence pieces and I used to organise my teenage social life from there. It would ring out and either be picked up by me at a pre-arranged time or by a local kid playing out. If it was the latter there would be a knock at the door of number 7, where I lived or a shout up at my bedroom window, “Helen, someone’s rung for you, it’s Louise.” I would put my shoes on and run down to the phone and spend hours racking up Louise’s Dad’s telephone bill.

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