My grandparents owned the local newsagents but I don't remember being spoiled with bags of sweets and chocolate. In fact my mother would not let us eat sweets because they were bad for our teeth. There was no mention of the fact that they could us children into fat or obese little blobs.

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As I said, people didn't do fat or diets back then, keep fit hadn't been invented, jogging was something you did if you bumped into someone and gyms were the school assembly hall which was turned over for an hour everyday so us kids could let off steam and look up girls skirts. The only thing heavy about the girls in my primary school were there thick heavy duty, navy blue knickers.

Friday nights were treat nights. My father would come home with a Milkyway for each of us children. If he was feeling particularly flush, it would be a Mars bar and sometimes, on rare occasions, a packet of Smith's Crisps with a twist of blue greaseproof paper in which the salt had solidified into a damp mass. And that was our ration of junk food for the week. On the rare occasion when I actually got a Mars bar, I would slice it up into thin portions to make it last longer.

On very rare occasions, my mother would buy 4oz of lemon sherbets which we would be allowed to have one on the proviso that we immediately brushed our teeth. Although shared between three children and my parents, the bag would last until the lemons had started to degrade and become one mass of sticky glue. This was a matter of economics rather than my parents presiding over a healthy diet and worrying about their children putting on weight.

Nearly thirty years later, it was my wife's turn to start taking the first of our three children to school. Now living in Brighton, it was a return trip of almost two miles with even steeper gradients to negotiate. Although we both owned cars, my wife chose to walk our daughter to school as part of her keep fit regime. By the 1980's, jogging, gyms and keep fit had all been invented and people were definitely doing fat on a wider scale.

They say that boys marry their Mothers and I was no exception. My wife would apply her makeup and whilst the flowing skirts and high heels had been replaced by jeans and sneakers, she still managed to look stunning and turn heads like my Mother had thirty years previously. The journey completed twice a day ensured she kept slim and fit and only stopped twice when she was heavily pregnant with our boys; which is when I would take over the task.

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