In the mid-70s, candles were all the rage in Britain. We weren't all attempting to open mini-Madame Tussaud's or give aromatherapy a kick-start.

Using the buses in my childhood was an adventure, not the tiresome chore that it's been turned into now. For a start, I used to catch buses at a time when the classic old routemasters patrolled the streets of London. The health and safety obsessives of today would have a heart attack if these buses were still around.

While I sit here writing this blog post, I listen to the house I sit in. It's quite a modern house, maybe 20 years old at most. The furniture inside is a mix of the newly acquired and the treasured golden oldies. All the appliances and gadgets though are brand spanking new. The oldest thing is the TV which is perhaps 3 years old.

My favourite TV programme when I was young was the Sweeney. My mum thought it was too violent for an 8 year old. The following day, I would run around our little backyard in Croydon reenacting only the most violent of the previous evening's fist fights and scuffles.

I was fortunate enough to go to primary school in the UK in the 1970s. These were the halcyon days before the arrival of government targets and weekly pen and paper tests to ensure some charter promises are being met and three nameless organisations in the capital felt worthwhile.

Sunday 5pm meant one thing in our house and millions of others like it across the country. – the Top 40. Rebecca and I used to listen to this radio show with religious fervour every week. By 7pm, we’d know not only the top 40 by heart, but also know the top movers up or down and all the new entries.

I went to a nice middle-class junior school. There was one student among us 5-10 year olds who wasn’t white and he had the, to us, exotic name of Patrick Fernandez. He was a great runner and would handsomely trounce everyone in all the shorter running races in the annual Sports Day, which took place every May. Everyone wanted to be his friend.

This was the taxing question I asked myself every Saturday morning when I woke up in my tiny suburban bedroom, surrounded by Scalextric , Hornby trains and Action Man.

A British holiday in the 1970s was a thing of utter magic, especially when seen through the eyes of a ten year old – as I was in the late 70s when we first went to stay in a caravan park in the Isle of Wight.

In 1982, my dear father, having heard about how computers were going to transform the world, decided he’d like a piece of that action – and bought his son a computer. A Commodore 64. And a very thick instruction manual.