Bob and Rosemary Skinner at Dad’s book launch in 2005 with Lord Lieutenant of Glamorgan Sir Norman Lloyd-Edwards

Today is a family landmark. My parents Bob and Rosemary Skinner celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary.

The world was a very different place in 1952, when they got married in Penarth, Glamorgan. Our present Queen came to the throne on the death of her father, King George VI. The first jet airliner, the Comet, entered service. Over 100 people are killed in the Harrow rail disaster in a collision between two steam and one electric train. Churchill’s government scraps Britain’s wartime identity cards. The country endures yet another year of food rationing, seven years after the end of the second world war. Eisenhower becomes US president – a result predicted for the first time by a computer. And the last serious London pea-souper fog kills 12,000 people, leading to the clean air act.

Mum and Dad have, naturally, been the constant in my life. I’m very lucky that they are still there for me as I approach my 50th year.