The Bar Mitzvah Boy

15th January 1983. 40 years ago today. Phil Collins topped the charts. It was a day of peak Thatcher and ZX Spectrum.

It was also the day of my bar mitzvah.

I’m not sure how much of my recollection comes from memory, and how much comes from the shaky video my parents commissioned, and which I haven’t watched since Betamax died (yes folks, we were that format-impaired family). But I remember so clearly being a shy prepubescent kid, waiting with a mixture of excitement and terror for it all to happen…