The next week, extending our holiday, we went on to another place, a second home for us, yet so different from our true gritty Northern home. We went to our beloved Auntie Min's tiny cottage in the little village of Eaton Bray in deepest rural Bedfordshire. Auntie Min had cared for us in the country in the days of wartime and bombing, in country that was soft and green with waving corn, dreamy river fords, village pumps and village shops.

Today, we were to walk up on to the downland for a visit to our favourite Whipsnade Zoo and a picnic - Spam sandwiches. Before we started, we had to get more film for the camera from the village chemists shop. We knew they had it, because like all chemists, they had a big enamelled metal sign on the front of the shop. All chemists did. They read one of two things - 'Kodak Verichrome' or 'Ilford Selochrome' . I can't remember the colour of the Selochrome sign, but the Verichrome was always on Kodak's trade mark yellow background. They were the competing mass market snapshot films for I would guess for 30 or 40 years. Millions upon millions of family Brownie 127 box cameras fed on Verichrome across the world.

Walking up on to the downs, camera loaded, I saw a new village sign. Excitedly, I pointed out its incorporated Festival of Britain logo to Auntie Min. (I wonder if it is still there? I wonder if there are any still showing anywhere? Ag readers, please tell me if you know of any.) We bought a box of chocolates at a shop using some ration coupons. On its lid was a colourful label. It was that logo again. Despite the sneers of my brother, I insisted on carefully removing it, and pasting it into my 'Special Agent' stamp album as if it were a valuable first cover. It's still there. It's still a golden memory.

I didn't know it, but my childhood wandering over field and moor was shaping my love of landscape - for me too a place of retreat too, a place of certainty, when life is insecure and painful. More about that in my forthcoming book 'Edge of Darkness'.

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