While my wife could no longer resist the JDOCD burning within and set off for yet another day standing around in Leicester Square in 30 degree heat being pushed and shoved by screaming teenage girls, I set off for a nostalgic trip back to my home town and surrounding villages where I had not been for a good many years. For me, a big part of such a journey was to set foot again in Epping Forest, the playground of my childhood.

I was lucky enough to be bought up a mere 30 yards or so from the edge of the forest and, as I mentioned in a recent item, not many days would pass without me walking or playing in this wondrous place. It is what I have always missed the most since leaving and was the second thing I wanted to do on this trip – after taking a look at the old house.

The boundary of my freedom as a young 7 or 8 year old was clearly defined. No further in than the small area we always called ‘Drum Maids’ although nobody seemed to know why ir bore that name. Drum Maids was a small amphitheatre shaped clearing and at one edge was a small hill that kids liked to roll down in the summer and toboggan down after snow. It obviously looked bigger when I was 7 of course. Pathways to Drum Maids were clearly defined and it was quite a highpoint so that once you got passed it you were treated to a panoramic view of the forest to the distant horizon many, many miles away. This was an enchanted place and a summer evening would not be complete without the laughter of children running around keeping the long grass at bay in the clearing.

My first problem yesterday were that the pathways, worn down and distinct in my childhood, were no longer there. In the place of the patchwork of pathways and trails were dense patches of nettles growing right up to the oak trees I used to sit under collecting up acorns and growing right up to the forest edge. When I did eventually find a way in it was still overgrown with nettles and brambles but I finally broke through and while there were still no clearly defined pathways I managed to get to where I wanted to be. Except it wasn’t there any more. The photo shows the surrounding trees beyond which was once a small clearing and a favourite place for children to play. It is now merely an overgrown tangle of bushes, nettles, brambles and is completely impenetrable. In short – it has been abandoned. Nobody comes here any more.

In fact, there was little evidence to show that many people visit this part of the forest and this is a tragedy. And for me, a great sadness. And for the kids of today an experience missing from their lives.

I have touched on this subject before but events have now moved on a little and the battle lines are drawn. But first, a little personal history.

When I was a kid I used to play outdoors – most often in the forest that we lived beside. In warm weather and when school was out, my friends and I would disappear early in the morning and as long as I touched base at home from time to time it was likely to be sunset before I returned. We had a ‘play’ area that stretched for many miles and on those hot, lazy days, we would get cuts and bruises, eat the blackberries growing in the hedgerows and get dirty and covered in the detritus of the forest floor. The cuts miraculously healed themselves, the blackberries didn’t poison us and the dirt? Well, what was wrong with a bit of dirt. It washed off. Childhood was an experience, slowly pushing the boundaries of our independence and the odd medical emergency was a necessary part of learning to cope. We learned which adults to avoid, which ones we could rely on for help if needed and mourned a wasted day if the weather forced us inside.

As a young teenager I still remember buying my first pair of headphones. I bought them in a local hi-fi shop where the guy behind the counter not only had good product knowledge but was quite happy to impart it because he wanted you to go away happy with your purchase. And he wanted you to come back some day and buy something else. So I got advice. But more importantly I got to handle the goods and try them out for comfort and sound quality. That’s right, they went on my head and I put the earpieces over my ears. My actual ears. I guess many people before me had tried on some of those phones and guess what… I didn’t catch any diseases. My ears didn’t fall off two weeks later and the world as I knew it did not come to an end. This was a truly serious and risky business – my life was at stake. But I survived and, what’s more, ended up with a pair of headphones that were just what I wanted, fit perfectly and eventually gave me years of service.

Wind forward to today and I am in need of a new pair of headphones. You already know what this is about. There they are on a rack in John Lewis, all bubble packed in that stiff plastic you need to take an axe to and no – you can not try them on before you buy. You can not test for comfort, fit and, above all, you can not test the sound quality. So says the evil Health and Safety Executive. So – I naturally ask – what happens if I get them home, manage to prise them out of the packaging and when I get back from the local Accident and Emergency department find they don’t fit? Well – said the guy at John Lewis – you get your money back less 10%. I kid you not – that was what I was told. I bought them – those ones in the picture – whilst making a verbal declaration at the till that I expected a full refund if I had to return them. You know the rest. Got them home – there was much swearing and searching for industrial strength tools to penetrate the packaging which, in the end I managed to do with no blood being spilled and do they fit? Of course they don’t. For a £69 pair of phones from a respected manufacturer like Denon they are bloody useless. If I put them on and someone asks me a question to which I nod my head – they fall right off. When my wife tried them on, the ear cups dangled somewhere around her lobes missing the actual ear altogether. Did it say on the box that they were for people with really big ears and long heads? Did the guy in Lewis’s inform me they were no good to me because my head just wasn’t big enough? How many petty laws might he have broken of he had done?

So – as I said at the top – the battle lines are drawn and these have got to go back. Now forgive me for this but I am about to say something hypocritical. I have ranted enough in the past about petty regulations that strangle our every moment and dictate our every move but sometimes you just have to bite your tongue. What I want to know is who wins between the appalling Health and Safety and the office of Fair Trading who dictate that what I buy has to be fit for the purpose?

I guess I am about to find out.

The picture, snapped on a mobile phone in our local Sainsbury, says it all really.

I am not one of those old farts who wants to preserve traditions. I might be saddened by the widespread loss of courtesy and politeness, I might be shocked that so many people these days seem unable to speak coherent English and I might make a lot of noise regarding the systematic dumbing down of our culture and education. But that doesn’t mean I disdain ‘progress’ – whatever that means – or wish to preserve old ways and traditions just for the sake of it. But really…. there are some things that should remain sacrosanct.

A decent pair of shoes should come in a box. A silk tie should be gently wrapped in tissue paper. Quality cigars should not come encased in cellophane. And wine…. ah wine. It was bad enough slopping plonk into a plastic bag inside a cardboard box – but this?

I am lost for words.

Let’s start out by saying that I know smoking is an unhealthy thing to do. I accept that.

I happened to be in the eye department of the local hospital recently. Stuck to the wall of the waiting area was a poster that simply said in large letters ‘Smoking Causes Blindness’.

The cigarette packet in the photo, in common with all packs sold in the UK, states quite clearly that ‘Smoking Kills’. As a smoker I am told that I have a high risk of a heart attack, a stroke and lung cancer. Because smoking causes heart attacks, strokes and lung cancer. I have also been told that the pain I sometimes get in my knees and the fact that my feet and hands are often cold are due to impaired blood circulation caused by smoking.

These days, no matter what eventually sends me to my grave, I bet someone will put it down to me being a lifelong smoker. Just about every ailment, it sometimes feels like – is caused by or made considerably worse by smoking.

And then there are all those other people around whom I have smoked at one time or another whose death I have quite clearly contributed to. Because, according to other notices, posters, leaflets, government health warnings and the anti-smoking brigade – so-called ‘passive smoking’ also kills.

It’s black and white. Smoking kills. Passive smoking kills.

In the first, say, 70 odd years of the 20th century, the vast majority of people smoked. And those that didn’t were constantly living in a thick, smoke-laden atmosphere. In buses, trains, restaurants, clubs, pubs, cinemas, theatres, offices, factories, shops – smokers lit up anywhere and everywhere. And at home, if your Mum didn’t smoke then your Dad probably did. And your brothers and sisters and the Uncle that dropped in every now and then… Smoke and smokers were everywhere and it was virtually impossible to escape from them.

So here’s what I want to know. How did the human race survive the age of tobacco? Why didn’t we all die out?

I could probably find all kinds of research into the ‘mobile phone effect’ if I cared to spend time looking but like a child contemplating the existence of Father Christmas or the Tooth Fairy, I’m not sure I really want to know. Give a particular form of human behaviour a name and class it as a disorder and you are expected to stop poking fun at those who show signs of having it.

I am referring, of course, to that strange behaviour some people exhibit when they are talking to someone on their mobile phone. If they were having the conversation with someone sitting beside them they would just talk normally. Put a mobile into their hand and suddenly they are an actor on a stage delivering a soliloquy for everyone to hear.

Myself and my dear wife travelled a few miles yesterday on a bus bursting at the seams with passengers making it’s way into the centre of Lincoln. There was the usual low murmur of various conversations taking place and if you listened carefully you might pick up a word here or a short phrase there as is usual. People tend not to bellow when simply conversing with a companion. But then, suddenly cutting through the background hum like a knife, came this one, youngish, female voice who appeared to want to inform everyone within a fifty yard radius all about her recent trip to the dentist.

Without going into boring detail we were treated to the whole saga from the pain to what the dentist told her – to the treatment she underwent in the dental chair right through to the antibiotics he prescribed for her. We even learnt that this was only the second time in her life she had been prescribed drugs, the first being her doctor prescribing her oral contraception.

Did I and my fellow travellers want to know all this? Of course we didn’t. Was this a rare event? We all know it isn’t because we experience this phenomena regularly. And yes – it annoys the hell out of the majority of people.

When the young lady finally finished her conversation and an eerie hush fell over the audience, I was very tempted to stand up and tell them all about my recent hospital experience with a delicate orifice, a small camera and a tube of KY but sadly for them we pulled into the bus station where were all to disembark so now they will never know.