I remember a front page splash I did on the Staines News about a student who died after crashing his car into the school gates while under the influence of alcohol. The next week there was a letter accusing us of being insensitive to the family's grief etc. I felt bad. The following week there was a letter suggesting the first respondent should spend some time in a casualty ward seeing the consequences of drink-driving. I felt better.

I remember the school song - Non nobis domine. I have only just discovered that it was written by Rudyard Kipling (or to be more specific it was Roger Quilter's setting of a text by Kipling).

I remember knocking at someone's door, presumably in my role as encyclopaedia salesman, and a little girl saying "Mummy, there's a man at the door." Man? Was I that old? Suddenly a gloom descended that I have been under ever since. Until, that is, the other day when I picked up a blanket a young mum had dropped from her pushchair. A little girl nearby said: "Daddy, that boy helped Mummy." Life is sweet.

I remember fare stages at some bus stops.

I remember often seeing Lol Coxhill with his saxophone busking at the South Bank end of Hungerford Bridge.

I remember recognising Ian McKellen sitting upstairs on the front seat of my bus towards Waterloo busily studying a play. Long before he was knighted. Long before he'd come out. Long before he was Gandalf. Probably before Peter Jackson was born.