This song immediately evokes a poignant childhood memory for me, from a family holiday in Cornwall in the summer of ’69.

I was staying in Harlyn Bay with my parents and my sister and I had a charmingly chaste holiday romance – my first – with a slightly older girl who was staying there too.

Every evening we used to play ping-pong in a kind of barn at the back of the hotel while the grown-ups gathered in the lounge to follow the progress of the moon landing – which places that holiday at July 1969.

The barn had a record player and I remember two Beatles songs – Michelle and Norwegian Wood – being the soundtrack of our games. I suppose we must have been listening to the Rubber Soul album.

The Harlyn House Hotel is long gone, now a luxury place called The Pig, and I can’t remember that girl’s name – though I do remember my first kiss, on the beach at night. 

Every time I hear this song.