‘US Moon Mission runs into technical hitch’ says a BBC headline this evening.

To be honest, the entire space exploration enterprise seems to have hit the buffers fifty years ago. My boyhood self would have been very disappointed, space intrigued me.

It was maybe 1967; much earlier, and the moment would have been beyond memory; much later, and the occasion would not have have assumed the aura it still possesses.

My aunt, uncle and cousins were coming home on a visit – from Canada. In 1967, air travel was expensive, …