It’s nice to have a friend. More than one if you’re lucky. My memories of childhood friends are predictably tied to the era: Sunny D, Apple Fruitang, MTV, bikes, and VHS tapes are all there, hanging around the back of my mind. Surprisingly, though, it’s stupidly long walks that I remember most fondly, although rather hazily. Like most kids before they had jobs (a paper round came some years later), we didn’t have much money, and what we did have we wanted to spend on sweets, so we’d often walk miles to avoid getting a bus – we even had a squeaky metal trolley we’d wheel about to carry all our stuff as we ventured to the distant pitch-and-put or tennis courts.
