Sometime in the early eighties, before I was born, my parents were driving home from a day trip one weekend. Apparently, they passed a place on the way which sold cream teas, and they decided to stop. They must have been quite taken with the place, for they later took me and my brothers to Amerton farm.

It became a favourite venue for my family. I loved the place: it had a tractor! I loved being sat upon the seat of an old rusty broken-down tractor which sat in the field, dad holding me upright. I could have spent hours pretending to drive it. We went there around the time of my birthday during my formative years, stopping when I was about eight. The place also had a giant in the back of the restaurant which dad and I used to search for after we had eaten. We never found it, but it was definitely there.

In the en, we grew out of it. The tractor was taken away – it became too old and dangerous, and I guess the giant moved on. The place was becoming too commercial, too big, too popular. It was not the same place my parents found that afternoon, nor was it the place I once loved. We stopped going, and I forgot about it.

Yet, no memory ever truly disappears from the brain. This morning, I was coming back from breakfast, and I heard a radio playing a local commercial station. I caught a part of an advert for Amerton Family park. It was in roughly the same place as my childhood haunt. Memories came flooding back. It’s funny how, here and now at uni, the past can suddenly jump at you, and you remember your old self. I remembered, in that moment, the lace of my childhood fantasies.

Only time and tide await no man. That place is gone, and what remains is an enterprise large enough to advertise on local radio. It will be just another tourist attraction now; no wonder the giant drove off on the tractor.