Miniature trains, action figures, board or console games and LEGO. You gave me one (or more) of these during my birthday and you had both my soul and my undying gratitude, of course ,with time being a very contorted concept when you are a kid, by undying i mean the relatively small period of time before i got bored of the gift.

What is it about secret compartments that is so fascinating? Is it that they conceal something or is it the object that they hide? Probably a combination of both.

I attended college in the late 1980's at Boston University in the U.S. Politically, it was quite a raucous era. However, it seemed that my generation with some few exceptions was uninterested in anything besides making money.

The first proper bike I remember having was a Raleigh Boxer. It was a bizarre yet strangely loveable addition to the Raleigh stable. The Chopper was the undisputed king, denoted by its majestically phallic moniker. The Grifter was its effortlessly cool younger brother. The Boxer was neither cool nor majestic; the gap-toothed bastard cousin of the Raleigh family.

Something guaranteed to send me dozing off on a Saturday afternoon were the words "...and now we're going over to Haydock Park for the 2.40." Aaagh! Living in a time and place where there was no alternative TV set and the garden was often a sodden mess of suburban rain and dogshit, I needed to devise a way of emerging sane again from an afternoon of "the horses".

When my wife and I choose a video to watch on the weekend, my first thought is: does stuff explode? My second thought is – well, never mind that. Maybe my love of action and fireballs comes from watching shows like The A-Team. Or maybe it comes from playing with explosives.

Whalom Park in Lunenburg, Massachusetts existed from 1893 to 2000. My memories extend back to the early 1970's, when it was modern enough to fit in with any midway style carnival attraction one might find at fairs and festivals today.

By the time I was finishing junior high, I had a firmly established belief about God, life and the universe. The first one definitely existed and the other two were his creations. My family being quite religious had a very big impact on how I viewed things back then but they weren't some kind of religious maniacs, I liked what I believed.

It was black and shiny. It had lovely curves and fancy cables. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life. I was 7 years old (if I remember correctly) when I got my first ever video game console as a present. My own, my love..my precious Sega Master System. And it had Sonic the Hedgehog preinstalled in its meager memory.

My love of candy started with a white chocolate Easter Bunny. Between that and the jelly beans I was hooked. But I couldn't indulge as I wished until I got my own income stream to spend as I chose. That changed with my paper route.

Evel Knievel jumped over stuff with his motorcycle: cars, buses, water fountains. His crashes got much more attention than his successful jumps. When Knievel made it, it seemed almost too easy, too smooth. No, people watched to see if this time the guy was gonna die.

No more work for a week or six! OK, so I've blatantly stolen the title and first sentence from Cliff Richard's legendary Summer Holiday film.

Not just one pub, but a mile of them along the seafront of the village next to Swansea, South Wales. I remember the traditional 'university' Saturday evening of starting at The White Rose and working your way along to Cinderella's club at the pier. Apart from The Antelope and Vincent's, I forget the other pubs. Has anyone else done 'The Mile' and can you remember the other pubs (around 1990)?

Remember when that album came out? Yes, I am talking about those vinyl discs with the hole punched in the middle. They were played on turntables that revolved in one direction and the only reason you might try to reverse it was to see if you could hear satanic messages as they played backwards. But that is a different story.

For me, 1977 was the summer of Bruce Lee. He had died three years earlier but the myth of the man was strong. I remember the song "Kung-Fu Fighting" by Carl Douglas was still on the radio and Bruce Lee seemed to be everywhere: posters, lunch boxes, and of course in re-runs of his movies.

Play School was watched by millions of children across the UK (and also versions in Australia and other countries) from the 1960s to the 1980s. We used to get our dose of it in the early afternoon before going home.

Music, as we all know, is a form of art, it soothes even the savage beast and has acted as means of revolution throughout human history. Of course, when you are a teenager, music is just another way for you to act cool and form close-knit groups to feel special. It sounds a bit cynical I know, but once you break it down a bit, it always comes down to this.

I still recall my Friday afternoon timetable from one of the years in my all-girl grammar school in the north of Manchester: double Chemistry followed by double Maths. On a Friday afternoon! It was cruelty bordering on abuse of use poor pupils who, by 3pm on a Friday, had both eyes firmly on the coming weekend.

In junior high, life is simple and usually extraordinarily good, you find happiness in simple things, you grow hyperventilated with the slightest provocation and in general, you are a bother to everyone except yourself and your friends, who, excluding very rare paradoxes, are almost always comprised by males. Girls are strange and weak and that’s it, so very neat and clear.

Love Thy Neighbour was a constant in our household in the early 1970s. Bill Bryson once famously wrote that he'd accidentally came across a TV show in the early 70s that: