IT’S quite understandable that modern parents constantly worry about their children. Of course, they always have done, although I do feel that it’s a bit more intense these days.

The advent of 24-hour media and the now all-too evident collapse in social adhesion in Britain’s under classes are proof of this.

But sadly, parental paranoia now means that children virtually ignore most adults in the street, even if they are well known to them. That’s how far things have gone.

I can recall a long-lost summer holidays when, as a small boy, I befriended a tramp who had camped on a grass verge near the village. Each day, I would race down the lane clutching a few items purloined from the pantry, tasty titbits fit for a gentleman of the road.

Once there, I would talk to him as he brewed endless tea in his billy can and fried luncheon meat in a pan blacker than the ace of spades.

It didn’t last. One day, I told my parents about my secret friend and that was that – grounded until further notice. Yes, the maxim ‘never talk to strangers’ still makes sense… but something has been lost, all the same.