Heatwaves just bring on the worst of middle-aged rants!

First off, you got up in the morning – as opposed to the early afternoon – and once you had a breakfast inside one (one option, no menu) you were out the door and you played until your dinner and then went back out again until it got dark.

Furthermore you were uncontactable from the moment you got up until the moment you came home for dinner – and nobody worried if they hadn’t heard from you for at least eight hours.

But then this was a different era, back in the seventies (and you could equally make it the fifties or sixties) because there really were very few distractions.

Now parents have to organise play dates so that their little treasures can meet other like-minded juniors for shared sulking that they’re being made to interact with something other than the control console for a video game.

But back before Playstations, Ninetendos, X-Boxes or video games, we lived in a world where there was one television channel – hence, no need for a remote control – and even then it didn’t come on until the late afternoon and closed down after the National Anthem around 11pm – not that you’d still be up at that stage anyway.

It was the era before mobile phones too – and for many families a time before even telephones in the house.

Because the mobile still had to be invented, you couldn’t have imagined a world where you could text your friends or tweet to tell them what you were having for your dinner.

But against that, all your friends were real, actual people – not people you ‘liked’ but never met.

You made and met your friends outside, on the street, in school, on the football pitch – not via cyber space. The upside was that this ensured you’d always recognise your friends in the street.

We fell out of trees, into nettles, got hurt on football pitches and when you went home your mother dug out a plaster for your knee, not the number of a solicitor so you could sue the relevant authority.

We played cowboys and Indians with nothing more than a length of willow and a taut piece of twine; we could amuse ourselves for hours with just a tennis ball.

Truly the summer seemed to go on forever and we came home tired and ready for sleep – now we rear creatures of the night who log onto 4OD until their little eyes turn square and blue.

And while we sniggered at our parents when they used to say they grew up in more innocent times, we actually did – you rode a bike without a helmet, you travelled in cars with no baby seats, boosters or indeed seat belts – and sometimes you hung on for dear life in the back of vans with no seats at all.

Of course time doesn’t stand still and the main reason that kids seem more spoiled today is that parents spoil them; they’d settle for your time instead of your money right up to the age of 14.

Then they’d gladly pay you to avoid breathing the same air as you in public, although they are like homing pigeons when it comes to finding you for the few bob they need for a new Playstation game that is required about twenty minutes after the thing came off the presses.

The truth is that you know they wouldn’t swap places with you after all your old stories of tough times past – and the reality is that you wouldn’t swap with them either, because they were the days of our innocent youth.