This was to be the year of the OPEC crisis and the effective toppling of the Heath government (though there wouldn't be a general election until the following February). Before the year was out, there would be petrol rationing and milelong queues at garages all over the country. Inflation would spiral up to 28 per cent. There would be acute shortages of toilet paper, sugar, electricity and coal, among much else. Half the nation would be on strike and the rest would be on threeday weeks. People would shop for Christmas presents in department stores lit by candles and watch in dismay as their television screens went blank after News at Ten by order of the Government. It would be the year of the Sunningdale Agreement, the Summerland disaster on the Isle of Man, the controversy over Sikhs and motorcycle helmets, Martina Navratilova's debut at Wimbledon. It was the year that Britain entered the Common Market and it scarcely seems credible now went to war with Iceland over cod (albeit in a mercifully wimpy, putdownthosewhitefishorwemightjustshootacrossyourbow sort of way). It would be, in short, one of the most extraordinary years in modern British history. Of course, I didn't know this on that drizzly March morning in Dover. I didn't know anything really, which is a strangely wonderful position to be in. Everything that lay before me was new and mysterious and exciting in a way you can't imagine. England was full of words I'd never heard before streaky bacon, short back and sides, Belisha beacon, serviettes, high tea, icecream cornet. I didn't know how to pronounce 'scone' or 'pasty' or 'Towcester' or 'Slough'. I had never heard of Tesco's, Perthshire or Denbighshire, council houses, Morecambe and Wise, railway cuttings, Christmas crackers, bank holidays, seaside rock, milk floats, trunk calls, Scotch eggs, Morris Minors and Poppy Day. For all I knew, when a car had an Lplate on the back of it, it indicated that it was being driven by a leper.