Alan Jones shares his reminiscences of growing up in South Liverpool during the forties and fifties in the aftermath of the Second World War – the most destructive war the world has ever known. It was a time of austerity, of rationing, but also a time when the extended family was still largely in existence.As part of an extended family, he recalls how he spent as much time with his grandmother as he did with his parents, and given she had brought up nine children, it was a family of sizeable proportions. It was a time when children had much more freedom to roam the streets and when corporal punishment was woven into the fabric of school life.