Speaking of 'family friendly' and 'red lights'... I was a bookish child, and at the age of 9 in 1961 I used to read everything I could get hold of, including my father's South London Press. Every week had a page called 'Is Your Neighbour in Court?'. A broadsheet sized page of lots of little stories from the various magistrates' courts. I noticed our own address in one of the stories, and the again in another! I should add that we lived in a maisonette and rented out the ground floor flat. 'Dad!' I called, 'what does "soliciting" mean?'. 'Why do you want to know?' demanded my very strait-laced father. 'Well', I replied, 'Mrs Tenant-Downstairs has been fined two pounds for it at Balham Magistrates Court' I also said that her husband Mr Tenant-Downstairs was fined for being drunk and disorderly at Camberwell the same day.. To say my father was annoyed would be an understatement. A staunch member of the Norwood Conservative Association (MP Brigadier Sir John Smyth, Bt, VC, MC, PC), and his address in the paper!. He never told me what it meant, but I found out myself. The whole thing contributed greatly to my feeling that the adult world was very strange, not least because Mrs Tenant-Downstairs, even to my inexperienced eye, was of an extremely unprepossessing appearance.
