THE beer stall in Parliament Street did not have a single customer, but the sweet stall was packed. And it wasn't packed with kids. Adults were standing three-deep, jostling to fill their bags with midget gems, cola bottles and liquorice torpedoes.

As I trailed back down Fossgate to work after witnessing this phenomenon, it occurred to me that I too find it difficult to shake off certain childish peccadilloes. While I like a pint as much as the next man (and the next man in my case is George Best), I would also gladly have given up the chance of a drink for a quarter of chocolate limes and a brief, but vivid, taste of the past.

And it's not only sweets that I can't leave behind. There is also...

Colouring. My kids can take it or leave it, but I love it. They scribble on a bit of paper every now and again to keep me company, but more often than not it's just me in the playroom rummaging in a box of crayons for just the right shade of green to finish off my Incredible Hulk picture.

And don't get me started on dot-to-dot books - I could write a whole column in praise of them alone.

Scootering. No sooner had my son got his new 'urban street scooter' out of the box than I was crashing into the metal garden gate with a resounding clang.

When I was a kid I had a tendency to ride my bike into inanimate objects on a daily basis, I couldn't skateboard if my life depended on it and my rollerskating skills put me on first name terms with most of the A&E nurses at St James's Hospital.

Scootering was the only independent means of transport that didn't leave me bleeding in the gutter. This was old-fashioned scootering however, where you trundled along on pram wheels at about 0.001mph. How was I supposed to know that modern scooters whip along at roughly twice the speed of sound? My hip and my ego now bare the bruises of my ignorance.

Swinging. Not the dressing in a leather thong and advertising your wares on the internet kind, the legs in the air, wind in your hair kind (maybe I should rephrase that, they sound eerily similar).

I can barely contain my envy when I see the pure joy on my kids' faces as they soar up into the sky, trying to kick the clouds as they go. I swear, if I could squeeze my over-inflated bum on to a swing, they wouldn't get a look in.

Crap food. I could happily live on fish finger sandwiches and copious amount of Angel Delight (butterscotch please, I'm not a child). I force my family to eat veggies, fruit, wholemeal this and wholegrain that until they beg for mercy while I'm secretly stuffing my face with Jammie Dodgers and Crispy Pancakes.

You can probably imagine my joy when I discovered last week that Alphabetti Spaghetti is coming back after a 15-year hiatus. Okay, so now it's going to be made from multigrain pasta and have less salt, but that won't stop me from spelling out rude words round the kids' mash will it? Talking of which...

Rude words. Someone only has to mention the words "bottom burp" or "trumpy trousers", which is an everyday occurrence in my house, and I crease up. I wag my finger, give the offender a stern ticking off then escape to the kitchen for a sly snigger.

That's why I have now banned myself from watching Dick And Dom In Da Bungalow ever again. Whenever they play the 'Bogies!' game, I almost spontaneously combust with repressed tittering.

Oh, and I nearly forget to mention Lego...

Updated: 10:51 Monday, April 11, 2005