I was raised in the UK county of Norfolk during the 1980s. Around the age of 10, I became friends with an American boy called Craig who was the same age as me. His father, an air traffic controller, worked at the USAF base just down the road from our village and the family lived only a couple of roads away from us.
Craig’s family, the McNeills, hailed from Alabama and had been in England around nine months when he and I became friends. We often played at each other’s houses, and I always found Mrs McNeill particularly very friendly and welcoming. She was an attractive lady with long blonde hair and I did have a bit of a schoolboy crush on her, I must admit.