Have you noticed it too? We see the world through the lens of our youth

STOP, rewind — this isn’t how I pictured it at all. For one thing, the France kit is wrong, it’s meant to be a lighter shade of blue.

- Jack Kessler

 As for the Dutch, where’s Dennis Bergkamp? Retired? I thought this was the World Cup.

Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be 500 words on how everything was better in the past. That was my last column. It’s more a reflection on that most malleable time in our lives, when we were still young enough that every experience was new but old enough to think for ourselves.

That period from the age of eight or nine until the mid-teenage years is the anchor around which all future experiences are compared. Music will never be as good again, even if your back catalogue was limited to slightly scratched Now That’s What I Call Music CDs. Football will have peaked, no matter that your Second Division side will later be bought by an oil-rich state and now wins the Premier League at will. And don’t get me started on politics.