Phew! This time travel’s exhausting. I’m just back from Ville d’Anjou, in 1966 Montreal. The old duplex had hardly changed. It was hard work, though, dragging that little sled containing an indignant baby wedged like a Michelin man into a yellow rabbit snowsuit round all those wintry streets. Especially whilst persuading the muffled-up three-yearold clinging tightly to my free hand that this was a good idea and we’d soon be at Steinbergs where we’d have hot chocolate.
Before that, I travelled even further back, some (cough, mumble, mumble) years, to the house where I grew up in Coventry, had a quick game of Cowboys and Indians round the jetties, nipped into Ada Ball’s shop for one of those sinful blue lollies she made in the only fridge in the street, and then sat on the kerb playing Five Stones. Then I popped back to 1871 to find my great-grandparents’ cottage. He was a humble waggoner and she the toll keeper at High Cross in Leicestershire. It’s been done up (just a bit!) and is now apparently worth some £700,000!