The season of ballroom dancing was upon us and crime was on the increase. I have little interest in ballroom dancing – I don’t dance. A paedophile was at large in our neighbourhood and the school had warned us to keep our children off the streets. My daughter told me that coming back from aerobics with a younger friend, they had seen a stranger by the telephone booth on the corner who asked if they could give him two fifty-heller coins for a crown.

‘So what did you do?’

‘I only had one,’ my daughter told me, ‘but he gave me the whole crown for it anyway.’