18 again: I returned to my life in 1983 – to reckless adventures, in a world soaked in alcohol

Sundays were deadly, the generation gap between parents and their kids was enormous, and a pint cost 50p. The frisson of casual violence was everywhere. When I left school and set off to travel, I had no sense at all of where I was going or what I would find I am wandering down a steep and unfamiliar street in Saint Peter Port, Guernsey, a force seven gale blowing in my face, when I look up to cross the road and see a back garden running up the hillside opposite.

It ends in a granite rock face about 30ft high, and in that moment, I have a vivid flashback to being sat on top of it, watching a group of people in the garden below. I can’t conjure their faces, but the memory is all too real: the sun on my face, a woman calling up: “Don’t break your neck! ” I can tell she’s not worried and neither am I. Nobody is. It’s a party and we’re young and we’re drunk and we’re carefree, without a worry in the world. Or at least, that’s how I remember it.…