Cycle Rides and Cola Sweets

For my eighth birthday, Daddy bought me a yellow bicycle with stabiliser wheels. He’d seen me after school, as I perched on the sofa and longingly watched the children on their bikes in Armstrong Close.

That afternoon I came back from school and threw my red Jack & Jill bag onto my tiny bed, with its freshly laundered Magic Roundabout bed sheets. I wanted to be out before everyone else, so no one could laugh at my stabiliser wheels.