You can imagine it was the social event of the day, everyone competing for the worst piece of news.

All in all I felt a little guilty about the fact that while us kids had been living the Life of Riley, a whole bunch of other people had been scurrying around like lunatics trying to keep the Social Fabric from Unraveling and my personal belief was that there were too many problems to think about and not enough people to sort them out.

Staying alive was what we did to pass the time.