[Angus]

I can remember during the summer holidays taking my three younger brothers up to Hyde Park and Regents Park with a red rover bus ticket - I was 11yrs old, my brothers were 10, 8 and 5. We would leave first thing in the morning with a picnic, a blanket and a football, and not come home till almost dark. No mobile phones in those days, and in any case we didn't have a landline till I was 13, so couldn't have phoned anyway! My mum's instructions to my brothers were that I was in charge, we were to stay together, and to ask a policeman if we got lost! Talk about being streetwise, we all were in those days because we had a fair bit of autonomy and freedom. I really can't imagine any parent allowing that these days - the world is a far more dangerous place.