Some time in the late 1970s, I was round at my friend Ian’s house. We had both recently celebrated our 10th birthdays – Ian’s was just four days after mine – and one of his presents had been an authentic leather soccer ball.
We were playing with this, for the umpteenth time that week, in Ian’s back garden, taking it in turns to be in ‘goal’ – actually two garden buckets turned upside down. The wooden fence at the bottom of Ian’s garden was fairly low and every so often, the ball would sail over it into the garden of the house backing on to Ian’s.