I have a friend with whom contact has never been lost since we worked together in the late 90s. He came to my wedding, he visited us in Greece more than once, and we've hooked up at least twice a year on average since I returned to UK six years ago. Now that I'm based in Bedford we've found that St Albans is a great place to meet up, it's a simple journey for each of us rather than a complicated trek for one. Our common interests are contemporary art and real ale

St Albans is currently hosting an exhibition about the illustrators who worked on the Ladybird books. If you grew up with Ladybird books there is no need for an explanation from me and if you didn't, well I'm sorry, but you'll just have to Google, because Ladybird books are so intrinsic a part of UK childhood in the 60s that I cannot begin to explain any more than I can explain Marmite or why Vegemite is not the thing.

They were small-format hardback books with full-colour illustrations and easy to read text. They ranged from learning to read-and-write to how most modern engineering works.
Disclaimer – I never saw a Ladybird book on splitting the atom.

And obviously, in the pre-Thatcher era, Public Services were just that, and not private companies floated on the stock exchange, mostly owned by foreign governments.