1977 was also, of course, the year that Derek Jarman made his iconoclastic film Jubilee, which was so much part of the punk movement.

I feel almost as if I had been born in a vacuum of innocence, and then had to come to terms with the fact that actually, I was born into the middle of history - the rather grimy normality of the 70s, which did, indeed, retain some traces of human innocence, but were also girded about by the demons of experience.

Speaking of [Philip] Larkin, in his poem about the First World War he wrote something like, "Never such innocence, before or since, that turned itself to past without a word".

Lots of things were there [in the seventies], in the social experience, but not quite named, lurking like a stranger on the edge of the playground.

I suppose I could say that to be interested in innocence already suggests a remove from innocence, perhaps a longing for something that is lost.

I went for a walk in the rain. Recently, whenever it rains, I feel like I want to go for a walk.

On the other hand, the seventies were drab. That is, I am utterly fascinated by the fifties and sixties.