Memory Mixtape #1 - Stranger Danger

I grew up in the 70s and 80s, two decades in which parents seemed to worry far less about their children's safety than we do nowadays. At 5 years old, I came very close to cutting open the radial artery on my wrist because I was playing outside by myself and fell on a broken bottle. I was taken to hospital with my arm wrapped in a tea towel, stitched up, and still have the scar to this day. Soon after that, I would regularly ride my bike to my mate Liam's house - a good two mile journey down lonely country lanes and dirt tracks - and then spend the day playing out with him in the fields and woods nearby while neither my parents nor his had the faintest clue to our whereabouts.

It's not that we weren't aware of "Stranger Danger" back in those days - this was the era of the Yorkshire Ripper, for Pete's sake, and we were regularly warned against all kinds of childhood threats by Public Safety films such as The Spirit of Dark Water and Charlie the cat. The former, voiced to chilling effect by Donald Pleasance, was scarier than any horror film of the time, while the latter also seemed weirdly creepy and unsettling... and inspired The Prodigy to do this, which always gives me the shivers.

The first school I went to was in an idyllic setting. A tiny village C of E - there were 11 of us in our year - it was situated next to an old church, surrounded by the same fields and woods I explored with Liam. After school, I would walk with other kids down a path through the fields which led to a little gate onto the main road where parents would wait so as not to get stuck in the crush of cars around the school itself. The village of Helme was not really designed for the school run.

My mum or sister would normally be the ones to collect me after school, but if my dad finished work early, he would come pick me up. It was on one of these occasions that we learned just how the times were changing when a local resident called the police and reported a strange man loitering near the school path. She gave the police his registration number and (as dad drove a company car), the police questioned the auctions where he worked (in Leeds) about why one of their employees was hanging around near a school many miles away, in work time.

Forty years later, my mum still laughs about the time my dad was questioned by the police as a "suspected paedophile".

This is an old song that I only discovered recently, but I've been listening to it a lot and it always reminds me of this story. It also reminds me of another related "stranger danger" tale which I'll tell next week.

The Ides of March were a band from Illinois who formed in 1964. They enjoyed considerable success with this song in the early 70s, which they failed to replicate. They took a break in 1973, reformed in 1990, and are still gigging today. The brass on this track reminds me of a classic 70s cop show theme tune.

Hey, well, I'm the friendly stranger in the black sedan

Oh won't you hop inside my car?

I got pictures, got candy, I'm a lovable man

I'd like to take you to the nearest star

Charlie says "do not get in this man's car".