SPORT! I am beginning to think that I am the most unsporting person.

I mean, do I really care who won the 400 metre race? I have to say no — but with one or two reservations.

I do like cricket, possibly because you can read a book or go to the refreshment tent in the knowledge that you will not miss much.

Then there’s football. I won’t make any further comment, as so many of the men folk of my acquaintance are besotted and any remark I might make will be taken as a personal insult.

I have just spent a good last hour looking through the papers; it’s not that I’m searching for vital news, but I’m just reading all the gossip about the people who are now known as celebs.

I’m starting to feel that I am behind the times, because I don’t know most of them.

Come to think of it, I can’t recall the last time I went to the pictures. In my teenage years, I would go at least twice a week — back row, double seats and ice cream at the interval — before we had to rush across town to the Boulevard to catch the last bus home or on to the station for the train to Cherry Tree.

While the corporation buses stopped at the top of Fielding Crescent, catching the train entailed a bit of a walk up to the Green Lane Estate where I lived.

Taxis and cars were not on the agenda, but when I met John things were very different, because he had a motorbike with a pillion seat. Was it dangerous? Yes! Was it cold? Yes! But was it convenient? Very!

As our relationship progressed we went everywhere on it; I loved it and even learned to drive it Do you think passing that test would still stand?

I think I still have the number plate up in the loft. It was EOP something or other. Great days!