Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will make you go into a corner by myself and cry for hours. - Eric Idle

Ours was an extraordinary generation, born into a devastated world, exhausted from six years of total war. Sixty million died. Nowadays the young think times are tough if they can’t get an Internet connection. They’re right; times are tough, but there was a time before it all began to go to shit, when it all really was shit. Our generation was born into that time. It was called World War II.

Not that I want to go, of course. I’ll be like the rest of you, clinging on desperately and screaming for more morphine.

By Christmas 1975 the divorce fairy was hovering. My marriage was breaking up, and no wonder. Lyn was a lovely woman and a good mother and she certainly deserved better. Not surprisingly, my faithlessness was rewarded by hers and she left me and my two-year-old son in London to spend Christmas in France. I did learn that infidelity is not a good basis for a marriage. Best to disappoint one woman at a time. Sad, but with my lovely blond son for company, I got an unexpected boost. On a snowy Christmas Eve, two men delivered an enormous thing wrapped in brown paper from a lorry. We ripped the paper off to find a fully stacked jukebox filled with all George’s favorite records. A note said, Every home should have one, Happy Christmas, love George and Olivia