Oh, they were certainly special. But modest, too. A nice meal and presents after pudding. On our birthdays my mum would let us have full control over the wireless after we ate. One day a year we didn't have to listen to the unending drone of the nightly news.

[ music! adventure programmes! these were exciting things to a girl growing up in the roaring twenties and the far less opulent thirties which followed. ]

-- Coronations were always a big big affair, however. The whole borough turned out.