I remember The Zodiac by Cosmic Sounds – although for a long time I thought it might even have been Cosmic Sounds by The Zodiac. It wasn’t a real group, though I didn’t know it at the time. After all, Wikipedia wasn’t around in the 60s. Now I even have the CD with liner notes by Richie Unterberger so its genesis is clear. A bunch of (top-notch) session musicians and someone with an idea for a concept album that was kicked around. I don’t know why the words still excite me: ‘Nine times the colour red / Explodes like heated blood. / The battle is on’. I don’t think it’s the quality. But Cyrus Faryar’s straight but very West Coast delivery probably has a lot to do with it:  ‘Quick - find another fire!’

I remember climbing up on to the shelves in the alcove – I believe to plug in my train set – and getting an electric shock. Perhaps more of a surprise shock than an electric one. I may have been trying to push bare wires into the socket rather than an actual plug. And this was in the days of two rather than three-pin plugs. I am sure there was an element of mischief involved.

I remember the theory of plate tectonics, which I thought made absolute sense when I was studying it in the late Seventies or early Eighties. I have only just discovered that it only became widely accepted in the 1960s.