And in no time at all I would be Mrs David Cassidy.

This wasn't some silly childish fantasy. I wasn't completely stupid about it. I knew it would be a few years before we would be able to get married. But I knew that David would be happy to wait.

My older cousin had a Saturday job in a record shop – the impossible glamour. She had enough years on me to find my devotion to David childishly endearing rather than pathetically irritating, and so she sweetly indulged me. Given her 'in' into the music business, I knew she was the woman to help me out. And, after weeks of pleading and pestering, she finally got me what I wanted. She got me David Cassidy.

I came home from school one day to find Him in my bedroom. The dented cardboard stand was of little matter to me. It might not be the living, breathing David, but it would give me something to practise on until the real thing met me and fell hopelessly in love. Before any of you gets carried away here with the notion of me 'practising' for David Cassidy, let me assure you that it mainly consisted of me making sure that he had a packed lunch and a warm jumper in his favourite colour (purple – as any good future wife would know) before he went off for another busy day of being David Cassidy while I stayed at home and looked after our children (a bald Sindy doll and a paraplegic Action Man).

So a happy little family – during the day. But when night fell it was a different story. I woke in the wee small hours, screaming for Mother because there was a strange man in my bedroom. Initially, Mother was delighted by the notion that I would never want a man in my bedroom (how she wishes that had stayed with me) but after the fourth night of interrupted sleep, she determined to take action. As the years have passed, I have generously decided to blame what happened next on sleep deprivation. Any other explanation would demand the prompt intervention of social services.

Mother took David from my bedroom and stomped out into the back garden with him. "Oh no," I thought, "she's going to put him out in the shed." But no. She marched purposefully over towards the bin area. "Oh no, she's going to put my beloved out with the rubbish." But she didn't lift the bin lid. Instead she cleared a small patch of the paved bin area. And produced a box of matches from her pocket. And then, and then... I can hardly write this as all the emotion comes flooding back. And then Mother set fire to David Cassidy. I screamed and tried to run outside, but she had shut the back door behind her. I could do nothing but watch through my fingers as my future husband went up in flames.

Like all great love affairs, we had such a brief, idyllic, time together – just imagine how happy I'd have been with the real one. But maybe I'm just a daydreamer...