This column is really about nostalgia and it was very nice last Sunday that a couple of strangers came up to me while I was enjoying a pint at the Mops and Brooms and said they thoroughly enjoyed these trips down memory lane.

It made me pause to think what I would have been doing on a Sunday lunchtime more than half a century ago.

Well, I would have been gathered with my family at the dinner table as there was no sitting in front of the television gobbling a pizza then. More likely it was roast beef, Yorkshire pudding and vegetables, and you were expected to clear the plate as this was not long after rationing had ended, so there were no fussy eaters.

In fact, I think I probably had a healthier diet then than now, with fresh vegetables and meat from the butcher.

We usually listened to the radio and I recall a comedy show called The Clitheroe Kid,
followed by Cliff Michelmore introducing Family Favourites.

From memory, the latter was a programme in which young conscripted servicemen would select a record for a loved one at home and complain from Aden or Cyprus that the sergeant major shouted too much.

Then it was out for a run around with mates or perhaps watch an episode of Wagon Train on television, or wait for the evening to watch the great Sunday Night At The London Palladium. It’s amazing to see how young television executives in recent years have rediscovered the appeal of variety shows, but they love reinventing the wheel in showbiz.

I remember going with mates to the Saturday morning cinema shows at our old cinema in Shenley Road. It closed in 1982 and was replaced by an office block.

As a special treat, I might be taken to the much larger Odeon in Barnet to see an epic such as Ben Hur but I preferred our old “flea pit”, although it was never as bad as that.

I don’t remember vast tubs of popcorn or a gallon cup of Coke but I do remember ice cream and taking an orange so you could throw the peel on the patrons in the stalls from the balcony.

In those days, companies like Harkness Hall, once based at the old Gate Studios in Station Road, would be employed to change the screen every couple of years due to the accumulated nicotine staining.

My real treat was to be taken on the way to the cinema to Hansons Tearooms and have a glass of Tizer with a lump of homemade ice cream in it. Nowadays it takes two bottles of red wine to provide the same level of pleasure.

Then, on the way along Shenley Road, I would buy a bag of heated peanuts from Tonibells Cafe.

In the mid 1960s the cinema was given a major revamp and renamed Studio 70, with cast members from a Carry On film attending the reopening.

The lively tune associated with the Pearl and Dean adverts remains in my mind plus those cheap local adverts which were just a card projected onto the screen for a Tandoori restaurant or a hairdresser always “just a short walk from this cinema”.

I remember going to see Summer Holiday and A Hard Day’s Night, never dreaming that decades later I would meet Cliff Richard and Paul McCartney. Surely that would never happen to a council house kid from Borehamwood.

I recall the adults rushing out of the cinema as the credits rolled to avoid the national anthem. Nowadays the credits would give you plenty of time. When did they stop playing the national anthem at cinemas?

I remember once we came out of the pictures, a term that has nearly died out, only to find the town enveloped in a thick “pea souper” fog. We still got on the number 52 double-decker bus but the conductor had to walk in front with a torch. Can you imagine the health and safety mob having a field day now? No doubt us passengers would have been contacted by no win, no fee, solicitors to claim trauma compensation.

A day trip to Clacton was an adventure for me. I guess for a kid today not going to Disneyland or on a sun-drenched holiday abroad would fall into the category of deprivation.

Of course, looking back is usually done through rose-tinted glasses. I can’t say I would want to return to huddling around a coal fire and scraping ice from inside the bedroom window, or having the choice of only two TV channels.

Those winklepicker shoes I used to wear certainly did my feet no favours and cinemas are more comfortable today.

It has been my good fortune to meet many of the stars I used to watch on that old black and white television set and on screen at our cinema.

My family are now gone, as has that era, and you can’t live in the past.

Just think, in another half century, kids will be watching holograms in their living rooms and interacting with the television adventure while asking how their grandparents ever put up with those primitive 50-inch plasma screens.

Nostalgia, as they say, never dates.