It was warm on that particular September afternoon in the early 1960’s.  I was on the “Down” platform at London’s Waterloo East station waiting for the train that would take me home to Dover, dressed in my school uniform complete with cap and short trousers which my grandmother always insisted I travel in because “it made me look neat and tidy”. Beneath my “travel clothes” I always had to wear a clean vest, just in case I had an accident and had to be taken to hospital. “What would the doctors and nurses think?”

To say that I was feeling pretty miserable that day would clearly have been an understatement. I had recently spent six glorious week’s holiday at my grandmother’s home in Basingstoke, where an endless number of carefree days had been spent in the nearby park hunting wolves and wild bears, fighting off hordes of bloodthirsty Red Indians, and defending the Alamo to the last man with a Winchester rifle borrowed from John Wayne.

With my face partially hidden, in true highwayman style, by the used handkerchief that I kept in my pocket and had to be pulled and stretched apart before I could use it, I had ridden on horseback with Dick Turpin along the highways and by-ways of England relieving many a rich and crooked magistrate or merchant of their ill-gotten gains.

Scores of imaginary damsels in distress had breathed sighs of relief as I had galloped up to the bandstand in the park on my invisible white horse to rescue them from a fate worse than a brass band; and by teatime each day the explorer Dr. Livingstone still remained hopelessly lost amongst the beech and sycamore trees that ringed the park – despite my best efforts to find him.

Countless happy, smoky, hours had been spent train-spotting at Basingstoke railwaystation where, on numerous occasions, I was privileged to see the impressive “Atlantic Coast Express” train thunder through at such a speed that it made the platform tremble underfoot. Or I had perched on my grandmother’s damp, lichen-covered garden wall, sharing the space with patches of bright-green moss collecting page after page of car numbers, or trudged through the streets of Basingstoke looking for various cars to enter in my sixpenny “I-Spy Cars” book. During every school holiday I hoped to earn enough points to receive a special certificate from “Big Chief I-Spy”, who, I was disappointed to find out years later, worked in an office block in London. Although I carried the crumpled book everywhere I went, I never did manage to collect the required amount. Now, with all this fun behind me, all I had to look forward to was school.