This is where it all started. We left Myddleton Avenue when I was eight so my memories are pretty hazy about my time there. The one thing I can clearly remember is a summer's day, sitting with my mum on a blanket under the front garden cherry tree when I must have been pre-school - I think I was properly happy.

Other things I remember are also mainly emotions - the thrill of my birthday morning when I got my first trainset, the terror of bad dreams, waking up in the night with a thirst and longing for there to be a water tap on the wall and not being able to get up. The time when I had measles or some other childhood fever and, in the words of Dave Gilmour, my hands felt just like two balloons. I recall sitting in my Mum adn Dad's bed doing a circular train jigsaw.

My friend Ashley Cross lived in Myddleton Close and our garden bordered on to theirs at the bottom. One time when I was recovering from an illness I excitedly ran down the garden and fell because I was weak. Ashley was two years younger than me but we used to play together - creosote the shed, or hide in the coal bunker, or doctors and doctors. Dirty games in general. One day I think we even got to ride on the dustcart - our mums weren't thrilled. I can still recall the smell of Ashley's rabbit hutch and his mother Joan's beehive hairdo. They had a poddle called Mitzi which died horribly I think.