Urge to read childhood favourites again

It's strange how much power a book you read in your early teens can have over you. Again, if you read a much cited rites of passage tome a little too late you can find it a pile of toss while others remember it vividly as a life changing moment.

I read The Catcher in the Rye when I was about 22 and thought that the irritating and "phony" Holden Caulfield deserved a good slap and will roll my eyes and curl up the right side of my mouth at anyone who reveres it. Jill, by Philip Larkin and written five years earlier does a much better job with an equally silly protagonist.

I was introduced to The Family from One End Street when I was about eleven by Mrs Millican who had a voice like a stoned Thatcher, a huge gap in her front teeth and walnut whip mane of dark blonde bun. The only clear memory I have is of the mother hiding from the milk man or the gas man and the curtains being drawn and the kids ordered to keep quiet. I was reminded of that episode recently when I recalled hiding below the windows with my mum from the insurance man and possibly the meter reader as well. Of course, my mum figured that of the curtains were closed it was obvious that you were in, hence my daring not to breathe as we got as flat to the floor and as close to the wall as we could.

I had to wait ages aged 14 for my reservation of Autumn Term by Antonia Forest and Fifteen by Beverly Clearly. Everyone in my year was desperate to read them, especially the latter as it was about boys and sex (or so I was led to believe!)

A few years ago I realised that revisiting the past is a bad idea: the place is no longer as pretty, the sex is dull, the company mind-numbing, the leading man an 80's muscle-bound moustachioed lump, so I'm not sure whether reading them again will awaken longings to climb on to my bunk-bed and kiss my poster of Bruce Willis or whether I'll sling them aside and wish I'd not disturbed the memory.