A Punk stopped me on the street.

What’s the connection between vanilla Ice cream, wet playtime and the Bonzo Dog Doo- Dah Band?

The Mackintosh.

Obviously!

It is rare that my family can organise themselves enough to all be seated around the kitchen table at the same time.

A pot of good ice cream, some raspberries and a pile of blueberries is what it took this time and so I seized the opportunity to test out my latest theory about memory and rain.

“When you think back through your memories, do any of them feature rain?” I ventured.

Slurp, scrape, slurp.

“I mean, do your childhood memories, when you look at them, have grey skies or blue?”

Slurp, slurp, scrape, slurp.

“Because all mine seem to be in sunshine.”

Burp.

It’s like having a conversation at a chimpanzee’s tea party.

I don’t know why I bother.

But I did, I pressed on.

Once the giggles had subsided.

“Do you have any old memories where it’s raining?”

Burp.

I went off and sulked in the room next door and eventually, once the laughter had ceased enough for her to walk, my wife came in and asked –“what’s the matter?”

“No one left me any of the vanilla,” I replied.

It was true.

Later it turned out that she has loads of old memories awash with rain but on further scrutiny they were all associated with camping or trying to camp.

Which is basically how my theory goes – we only remember rainy days in the past when it involved leaking tents; our good memories are bathed in sunshine.

So either we have a sun soaked filter that we use when we look at the past or it never rained very much.

I grew up in England – famous for its showers – yet having spent about (a quick mental calculation) 1000 days at primary school I can only remember one wet playtime.

Yet I wore a Mackintosh for most of the time between the ages of 5 and 11.

We don’t use the word Mackintosh much these days. Neither of my children have ever heard it – but then again they have discarded the need for the word coat as well.

When it rains they put on a second t-shirt.

A third in winter.

A quick check on wikipedia for Mackintosh alerts one to the fact that early models tended to melt in sunshine, so maybe they are right to avoid it.

The fact that I was wearing one in the early summer sixties England says a lot about the summer weather.

But even a Mackintosh was no match for the wet of a wet playtime.

We were confined indoors, probably still wearing our Mackintosh’s, and it was brilliant - the teacher had this secret stash of hundreds of old comics, something we never knew about, out they came and it was like paradise; the windows steamed up and we were lost in tales of the Bash Street Kids and Dennis the Menace, Beryl the Peril and Lord Snooty.

I’m sorry if you are too young to remember much of this, it was a golden time, drowned in sunshine - except this once - and we even had the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.

Yep – a punk stopped me on the street.

He said -“have you got a light mac?”