I’D like to know what’s being done about the budgie crisis? That’s right, the budgie crisis.

Everyone used to have a budgie when they retired, it seemed. Yet when I take the kids to see older friends, none of them have budgies anymore.

Is there a budgie deficit? A global, economic budgie meltdown? Did society decide it was unfashionable or cruel to keep them locked up?

Nana used to have one. Long, frustrating hours were spent trying to coax a ‘hello’ out of it.

It would glare at us, then repeatedly head-butt its reflection in the little mirror.

I think it was trying to tell us something – Polly going crackers?

My precocious sister, who blossomed to become a Buddhist, reached a certain age and confronted Nana.

“Why is your budgie in jail?”

Feeling guilty, Nana let it out for a few laps around the lampshade. It ended disastrously with ‘mess’ all down the curtains.

Nana survived the Barrow Blitz but mess all down the curtains she could not tolerate.

Budgie’s dirty protest saw it re-confined to ‘Alcatraz’ with no prospect of parole.

It stopped head-butting and started attacking fingers.

When I look back, 70 per cent of my childhood involved adults pretending things were better than they actually were. Lying, as it’s called these days.

Nana once offered to get us a ‘special drink. The best drink in the world! A glass of Corporation pop’. Corporation pop is tap water... the adults found all of this highly amusing.

I didn’t. So I went into nana’s kitchen, got her big back door key and chucked it as far as I could into the big privet hedge.

Grandad searched on his knees till dusk. It was never found.

Years later, he virtually excavated his entire garden. The missing key tormented him for life.

It’s still brought up at family gatherings. “Do you remember that time you threw the key away? We never found it you know.”

Me: “Let me apologise by buying you a glass of the best drink in the world…”