Forget the present

I CAN remember Phensics, Oxydol, inkwells, third class railway carriages, sago pudding, jerkins, Carter's Little Liver Pills, Royal typewriters, Wigfall's bicycles, collar studs, Seccotine ("sticks everything, not for a day or a week - but for ever"), leather footballs, dubbin, The Court Players, cats' cradles and Iron Jelloids.
By The Newsroom
Published 23rd Jul 2007, 12:30 BST
Updated 1st Aug 2007, 10:32 BST

As if that wasn't enough, my memory is crowded with vivid recollections of air raid sirens, gas masks that made a fruity vibration when you exhaled forcefully, my father digging a hole for our air raid shelter and hitting a stubborn layer of rock, night lights resting in a saucer of water, condensation running down the shelter wall, school milk, static water tanks and VE Day bonfires.

I retain clear mental pictures of Teddy boys' suits, blue suede crepe soled shoes disrespectfully referred to as "brothel creepers", National Service, Aldershot, Housewive's Choice, Two Way Family Favourites, the Billy Cotton Band Show, Mrs Dale's Diary, Dick Barton Special Agent, and the delightful music that introduced Paul Temple.

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I remember Thorpe's Restaurant on one side of Fargate, Fields' coffee house on the other, the Gaumont, Harry Heap, the oyster bar across the road from the Lyceum Theatre, Fred Walters, Weaver to Wearer the 50-Bob Shop, Wilks's hardware shop, Monty Marston, the Grand Hotel, Coles' Corner, Sheffield United Tours and Glossop Road Baths...

Winter warmers, tramcar "specials", Lonnie Donegan at the Empire, Charles Street, Count Basie at the City Hall, George Formby at the Lyceum, The Stirrings at Sheffield Playhouse, Albert Modley in panto, Gloops, Sir Learie Constantine playing cricket at Millhouses Park, Margaret Lockwood in The Wicked Lady, and travelling on a barge from Sheffield canal basin to Tinsley.

Ah yes, as Maurice Chevalier said, I remember it well...

I remember the Top Twenty on Radio Luxembourg (the only top twenty there was at that time), Amami Shampoo, Shoreham Street tram sheds, the Sidewalk Cafe on Chapel Walk, Marsden's Milk Bar, bus conductors, Davy's Victoria Cafe-Restaurant, Humber Super Snipes, Darnall Medical Aid annual parade, Wardonia Barrel-Hole Razor Blades, Marshall and Snelgrove, Stewart and Stewart, Fisher, Son and Sibray, Brown Bayleys and Redgate's toy shop.

It's strange having all these things rattling around inside my head but what can I do?

They just keep rattling around. There's no way out .

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I can remember steam trains, bicycle clips, the Wizard, Sheffield Joint Omnibus Committee, the first day I went to school in long trousers, charabancs, Attercliffe Palace, and wind-up gramophones.

It happened more than 50 years ago but still fresh in my mind is the day when I had to try to explain to my editor how it came about that I made a dreadful mistake in something I wrote for the old Sheffield Telegraph.

He wasn't best pleased but he let me off lightly.

I can remember floods, fires, court cases, council meetings, people I interviewed, my first by-line (in 1955), and hundreds of people I have worked with.

The strange thing is that although I can remember all these things in vivid detail, nowadays I regularly go upstairs at our house to look for something or other and when I get upstairs I can't for the life of me remember what it is I'm looking for.