As a child, many hours had been spent walking up and down the canal towpath, looking in the bushes in the small hope of finding a tattered, rain soaked copy of Razzle or Readers Wives... with the vain desire to try and find some kind of understanding. 

Now he just looked on in shock and awe, thinking what would have become of himself had he been born into today's world, with today's technologies, and he wondered at the small amount of childhood innocence that he had actually managed to retain.