Food was hugely different then. No pizza, no pasta (not even spag bol), no coffee. No wine, and take-home beer was sold only in big (750ml) bottles. There was no frozen food, and while, of course, there were no frozen chooks there were not even fresh dressed chooks or chicken breasts. Chicken was only ever a roast, and it was a bird that had been decapitated in the backyard before, to the amazement and delight of children, running amok (and upright) for quite some time with blood spurting from its severed neck.

Corner stores instead of supermarkets, butcher shops with sawdust on the floor, milk delivered to everyone in pint bottles before dawn, a draught horse pulling a bread cart.

No backyard pools, no barbecues, but every backyard had an incinerator that sent smoke, often black smoke, billowing into the neighbourhood. No airconditioning, no flyscreens. Very few phones and television sets, but everyone had a wireless that played Dad and Dave at 6pm.

And the biggest night of the year, bigger even than Christmas Eve and Christmas night and New Year's Eve, was cracker night. Skyrockets swishing from milk bottles, Roman candles, shooting stars, penny and tuppenny bungers, tom thumbs and a backyard bonfire so big it would make the news today.

And all children had aunties and uncles who weren't really their aunties and uncles. And all men smoked and they smoked anywhere and everywhere.

How was the world of your childhood different? Were they really the good old days?