When I get back to the house and having flicked through the newspaper without really reading it I set up my laptop and begin typing all those difficult letters. Ending memberships and subscriptions, winding up a life.

It feels odd doing this here in this house. There are so many memories not just of my dad but of my own experiences too. So many of the rites of passage that went with my growing up took place within these walls.

Girls were a different species. This I had realised from a young age. They dressed different, smelled different, had boring toys and were prone to fainting in school assemblies.

By the time we left junior school, my friends and I were all too well aware that the equipment between our legs had a purpose other than seeing who could pee highest up the wall, and we were fluent in the accompanying four-letter words. Over the next two years, we would experience the momentary shame of waking after a nocturnal emission; and discover the furtive, solitary thrill of the wank.

It was the passing of these milestones that set our thoughts towards exploring the routes we hoped, one day, would lead to the proper exercise of our reproductive function. Though of course, that meant getting to know girls.

In May of 1976, when I began going out with Penny, I was still a virgin. Although there had been three occasions in my life up to then that I counted as ‘near misses’ so far as sex was concerned.

The first had been when I was fourteen. Most of the lads at school were full of tales of sexual conquest; these I suspected were gross exaggerations. Many of the stories seemed to involve a girl, then in the fifth form, who had the dubious reputation of ‘school bike’. The services she would allegedly provide behind the groundsman’s hut, in exchange for a Curly Wurly, were the stuff of my wildest adolescent fantasies.

I was an only child and still somewhat nervous of girls, never having found one willing to permit more than the odd tentative fumble without confectionery changing hands. My girlfriend at the time was Emma Sutherland from 4B, she of the tartan scarf. Emma seemed quiet and non-threatening in a mousey-haired, dumpy sort of way.

Our dates were a complex chess game of move and counter move. She would kiss me. I’d break off to breathe and try to introduce sweaty fingers beneath her shirt. She’d remove the offending digits and kiss me again. I’d slide a hand up her thigh. She’d knee me in the groin.

If she was feeling in a receptive mood she might allow me to fumble a couple of buttons and gain a tantalising glimpse of bra, whilst she inserted pudgy fingers into my trouser waistband and fondled the elastic of my underpants.

This was as far as our courtship went until one evening just before Christmas. I’d asked her round to my house, whilst my parents were out for the evening, on the pretext of listening to some music. My intentions for the night had been entirely dishonourable, but as it turned out I didn’t have to try too hard. She arrived carrying a large bottle of cider.

We went up to my room and played a few records; we were both very much into 10cc at the time. Posters of the band competed for my wall space with Ferraris and steam trains. Emma proceeded to consume most of the cider herself, deigning to offer me the odd swig. As the alcohol took effect she became interested in pursuing a more physical side to our relationship.

We snogged, progressing quite fast up to the two-button stage. For the first time I was able to put a hand up the back of her shirt without encountering resistance. Emma’s hands were wandering too, and – making feeble protests so as not to seem too keen – I let her pull off my T-shirt. I managed two more buttons whilst she ran her fingers over my ribs, like a pianist exploring a new instrument. The record player had stopped. She was working on my jeans and I was trying to remember what Craig had said about unfastening bras, when a chill ran through me as I heard the sound of a key in the front door Yale.

My parents were back.

Leaping from the bed, I pelted downstairs struggling into my T-shirt as I went. I greeted Mum and Dad in the lounge with a somewhat breathless, ‘You’re home early,’ hoping against hope that I didn’t look too dishevelled.

Many years later my dad told me that I’d had lipstick on my face, my shirt was on inside out and my fly was unzipped. Any one of which was incriminating but taken together were conclusive evidence that I had been partly ravished. He earned my eternal gratitude for being tactful enough not to say anything at the time.

Looking back I realise it was several months before I was trusted to be alone in the house again. I think Mum and Dad must have devised some sort of rota in order to protect me from the attentions of amorous, drunken schoolgirls, or perhaps to protect amorous, drunken schoolgirls from me.

My dad insisted I walk Emma home. On the way we had to stop twice for her to be sick in passing shrubberies. I’m afraid that fourth form relationships just don’t survive that kind of test. It was our last date. Of course I told the lads at school that I’d shagged her. This earned me some short-term kudos until someone (not me) wrote, ‘JB, 4A screwed ES, 4B’ on a toilet cubicle door, accompanied by a small anatomical drawing. It was lucky for me that Emma’s big brother was in 5D, a form not renowned for brainpower, and he beat up James Bennett, not having bothered to check for JBs further down the register. The fact that Emma didn’t enlighten him made me think she still liked me; or perhaps she’d been too drunk to remember what had happened.

My second close shave was during the O-level exams in 1975. As fifth year pupils, we had finished our formal schooling and attended only on the days we were required to sit examinations. Our remaining time spent in revision – at least that was the theory.

This particular day was a Thursday, one of the two days that my mum worked part-time; there was a lull in proceedings as I had no more exams until Monday. The day dawned hot and humid. Having remained in bed until after Mum had gone to work, I was pottering around the kitchen, in my underpants, making coffee and toast, when I heard a knock at the front door. Sandy, the dog, gave a short bark.

Thinking it would be Craig, come to share some revision time, I told Sandy to stay, sauntered through to the hall and pulled open the door.

On the step stood Katie Simpson from across the street. Tall, blonde and three years my senior. I had lusted after Katie from a distance since the moment I entered puberty. She held a small brown paper parcel in her hand.

‘The postman put this through our door by mistake,’ she said, eyeing me up and down. I reached out my hand to take the envelope but she stepped over the threshold forcing me to take a pace backwards.

She closed the door behind her and placed the packet on the hall table next to the telephone. ‘What have we here?’ she murmured. Reaching out a hand, she placed a cool finger on the side of my neck and traced the line of my bare shoulder. I felt a stirring in my underpants.

Taking her finger back, she began a very slow unfastening of the front of her blouse, revealing a crisp white bra with lacy edges. I watched, with a slack jaw and goggle eyes, as the girl for whom I had used up so many paper tissues undid buttons less than three feet away. The activity in my pants slipped into overdrive, the front fabric stretched almost to bursting point.

When she reached the last button though, the excitement became too much for me. Her eyes flickered to the wet stain spreading across the front of my pale blue briefs. ‘Kids,’ she spat, raising her eyebrows. She re-buttoned her blouse in double quick time and was gone.

I leaned back against the wall, sank slowly down to the carpet and cried, until the dog wandered in and began sniffing my crotch, forcing me to go upstairs to clean up.

Whenever Katie saw me alone after that she would address me as ‘premature ejaculation boy’. Those three words hurt me more than the incident itself and I became determined that this should never happen to me again.

Practising through long half-hours of masturbation, I perfected a technique of reciting the winners of the Formula One drivers’ championship in my head to delay the moment of climax. This was an idea I later shared with Craig.

The events in that hallway with Katie I have never shared with anyone. It has always been my shameful, closely-guarded secret; I even swore the dog to silence.

My third brush with sex came in early 1976, not long before I started going out with Penny. During the Easter holiday I had been assigned to work on a lower sixth history project with Deborah Masters.

Deborah had a reputation as the college prick teaser. This was something I never quite believed in. She was a plain girl; her manners and demeanour were always polite, almost to the point of prim. And she insisted on being called Deborah, never Debbie or Debs.

Deborah’s dad had a caravan that he parked at the side of the house when it wasn’t in use. We often used this as a place to work as it provided a refuge from her home, which most of the time contained two younger sisters and a remarkable diversity of domestic pets.

The caravan had nylon carpets, wipe-clean surfaces and carried a faint odour of boiled cabbage, but it was quiet and we were not disturbed.

We had progressed well with the work and I had almost dismissed the rumours about Deborah from my mind.

On the day we completed the project we were sitting in the caravan drinking a celebratory Coke. Finishing my drink I began to pack up my books. ‘Doesn’t a job well done deserve a kiss?’ she asked.

I leaned across to give her the demure peck on the cheek, the type I reserved for my nana and visiting aunties, but as I did so she grabbed me and began tearing at my clothes with a frantic urgency.

I was taken aback by these events, but fast recovered my sense of lust and within minutes we were both naked and I was up to Juan Manuel Fangio, Mercedes, 1955. I had begun carving the first notch on my mental bedpost when Deborah unleashed her verbal weapon of mass destruction.

‘No!’ she said, the word tolled like a funeral bell. ‘We mustn’t go any further. I’m not ready for this.’

I was devastated. My male ego lay shattered; my world tumbled from its sky, the atmosphere of the caravan crackled with sexual tension. The carpet crackled with static. How could she stand there with no clothes on and say that?

Now ashamed of my own nudity, I turned my back on her, stuffed a stubborn erection down the left leg of my jeans, pulled on my shoes and shirt, gathered my books and my denim jacket and left, slamming the van door so hard that the whole thing rocked on its props. It wasn’t until I was halfway home that I realised I’d forgotten my underpants; but I wasn’t going back.

I told Craig about this, leaving out the bit about the underpants, he said I’d done well as no one else, to his knowledge, had ever got as far as I had. He took this as evidence of Deborah’s weakening resolve and re-doubled his own efforts to get her into bed.

We were awarded an ‘A’ for the project but that was of no consolation to me. I never did get my underpants back. They were my favourite pair too.