MY PARENTS USED TO go to bed early, usually just after hearing the 10 pm BBC news on the radio. When I was a youngster living at home, this used to upset me because I did not want to go to bed so early or to stay up without company. However, my aunt, my mother’s sister, and her husband were ‘night owls’. They lived a few minutes’ walk away from our family home.

Often, I used to wander over to their house after my parents had gone to bed. I would join them in their comfortable living room, and we would chat. Every now and then, our coffee cups would be refilled. And as the hours ticked by, the empty cafetieres would be replenished with coffee – one with normal coffee and the other with decaffeinated. As night merged into early morning, the three of us would nod off for a few moments and then wake with a jolt.  This would happen several times during the early hours of the morning. I used to love these late-night sessions with my relatives. Frequently, I left my aunt and uncle’s home at about 3 am.

I used to walk home along the tree-lined streets of Hampstead Garden Suburb that were illuminated by the strange orange glow from the bulbs on the concrete streetlamps. The streets were deserted, without cars or other pedestrians. If you were lucky, you might have spotted a fox scuttling past. To be honest, even in daytime, the thoroughfares of the Suburb were almost as dead. Occasionally, I would encounter a policeman on his nocturnal beat. Usually, these encounters led to me being questioned politely. What was I doing out so late? Where was I going? My answers, my innocent mien, and the lack of a sack of swag probably reassured my questioner that I was innocently going about my business.

On weekdays, despite going to bed late, my uncle was ready to drive with his wife to Golders Green station at 8 am. This was the time I headed in the same direction on my way to school. Oddly, although my parents had retired just after 10 pm, they were always still lying in bed when I left the house at 8 am, having prepared my own breakfast.

Something that has only struck me whilst writing this is that my parents did not give any hint that they were concerned at me wandering the streets alone in the early hours of the morning. When our daughter reached the age when she went out with friends at night, often returning at 3 or 4 am, I could not fall asleep until she returned home. These days, so many decades after I was a youngster, the streets are not nearly as safe as they used to be. I am not saying that the streets of London were 100 percent safe when I was old enough to first venture out alone, because there were hazards. However, many new dangers have been added to those that I might have had to face ‘when I was a lad’. ‘That’s progress’, you might say, but, remember that, speaking medically, a disease that progresses is one that is getting worse.