- Going vegetarian. Two gay vegetarian friends persuaded me to go veggie in 1975. I've often considered going vegan but I'm just too fond of cheese.
- Passing my driving test. I was absurdly nervous as I took my final driving lesson, but come the test I was mysteriously super-cool and passed easily.
- Meeting Jenny. We were both working in a central London bookshop at the time, and we clicked instantly. Thirty four years later we still love each other to bits.
- Flight in a light aircraft. A school friend's mum owned a light aircraft and took me up for a flight. It was both scary and exciting.
- Seeing a corpse. At a mortuary when I was a local newspaper reporter. It was a young woman who had killed herself. A very strange sight.
- Having sex. Aged 22 with a beautiful woman who loved Janis Joplin, cannabis, long floaty dresses and everything about the sixties counter-culture.
- The debut Beatles record. "Love Me Do". The start of an incredible musical phenomenon. I was always desperate for their next release.
- The Isle of Wight Music Festival in 1969. Waiting impatiently for Bob Dylan and queuing endlessly for everything amid the chaos of tents and rubbish.
- My first day at work. In 1965 smoking in offices was normal and I virtually suffocated from the thick fug of tobacco smoke. Alarmingly, I soon got used to it.
- My first pay packet. In those days you got an envelope stuffed with cash. I couldn't quite believe I was being paid for rustling up news stories.
- Arriving in Australia. Drinking in every detail of the scenery as the taxi took us from the airport over the Tasman Bridge to our apartment in Hobart, Tasmania.
- First visit to Venice with Jenny*. More scenery-drinking as a water taxi took us along the canals and past the amazing old palazzos and churches to our hotel.
- Arriving in Belfast. My first holiday in Northern Ireland (Jenny was there as a child), and I loved the people and the scenery. We moved there in 2000.
* I went there as a child with my parents and sister
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