DURING a bike ride last week I indulged myself in a rare show of nostalgia.
As I rode over a railway bridge and took a right turn I suddenly realised that I'd come across the street where I was raised for the first 14 years of my life.
Not only that but as I rode down the street I stopped outside the house where I not only lived during that time but where I was born.
And it felt strangely comforting.
As you would expect the memories came flooding back of my childhood.
The corner shop where I would run to every morning on my way to school that in the 1970s seemed a mile long was, in reality, a two-minute walk.
The recreation ground opposite the house where my friends and I would scale the spike-topped bars to play football before being chased off by the petrifying park keeper.
And the wall where an eight-year-old Simon Readman cut his head as we chucked snowballs at each other.
I must have looked like some kind of weirdo as I parked the bike up and stared at the bedroom window where inside I was born back in 1968.
Stories I've heard tell how I was a late arrival by a week, the umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck and as soon as I appeared (all manner of colours I'm told) I was rushed to hospital in an ambulance where I stayed for three weeks.
Rather amusingly now, 40-plus years later, I can laugh at the tale I'm told about how my father was asking the ambulance driver to turn the volume of the football commentary up so he could hear how Manchester United were faring in their European Cup final against Benfica. The Red Devils, as I'm sure you all know, won in extra time, of course.
I remounted the saddle and wheeled away, passing my old primary school, a red-brick building that seemed the size of an ocean liner as a kid, but in reality only holds just a few classrooms.
I smiled across at the swimming baths where I tried, and failed miserably, to chat up girls every Friday night as a young teenager.
Fast forward all these years and I'm now in contact with old friends from this time through the marvels of social media.
Therefore I now know who is married, who is divorced, who has six kids and who has none.
I'm up to speed with former classmates who have settled on the other side of the world in Australia or New Zealand or have emigrated across the pond to the USA.
And, most sadly of all, I was struck this week by the sight on my Facebook feed of the news that one of those former friends, a girl I have not seen for more than 30 years but whom I used to run around a playground with as a youngster, has died.
At the age of 46, Jennifer, I've been told, passed away after contracting a kidney disease.
Thus, my nostalgic trip around the haunts of my childhood came to an end and, in a way, full circle.
RIP Jenny, I'll remember the long blonde hair you had as a youngster and your broad smile.
