[Sundae]

Makes me all misty eyed for the tyre swings of my youth, rigged up by older brothers and dangerously fraying. And you had to be ready to run if they decided to come and "play". Their playing was of the cigarette-smoking, cat-calling, dead-leg-punching-of-little-kids variety.

And the unhygienic places we were driven to, to get some respite.
I was quite affronted when my Mum called my favourite little pond a pool of stagnant water. But in hot summers it did recede enough to show a very interesting spiky piece of orange machinery...

No wonder I was spooked by long grass and the gentle persistence of cows.
I was too used to the skinned knees which came from running through the iron hard furrows of wheatfields, and the musk of damp abandoned mattresses (not to mention the inflated remains of discarded porno mags).

I may have lived on the edge of the countryside, but it wasn't exactly a Famous Five storyline.