I went on a school trip to the battlefields of Belgium in the spring of, ooh, 1991. I remember it all pretty well, but I don't remember who found the hand grenade.

It was rusted and brown, although still suitably pineappleish, and somebody found it lurking under a bush at the bottom of a grassy crater. Strange, the way you can remember the expressions on a face, even if you don't remember the face itself. At first there was triumph and a shout of “Bingo!” Then the face fell. The grenade was held at arm's length, by an arm apparently willing itself to grow longer, and then it was placed gingerly on the ground.

The rest of us formed a circle around it, probably going “ooh”. For a while nobody moved. Then the class victim, I won't tell you his name, came running up. He had a bad time back home, that kid, and here, away, he was probably having a worse one. I guess he just saw his moment. And so, moving with a vigour and purpose that no amount of threats and cajoling had ever inspired on a muddy Edinburgh rugby pitch, he barged through, raised a large stone above his head, and threw it at the bomb.

It sounds worse than it was. I'm not sure if he intended murder, or was just very bad at showing off. Either way, nothing happened, hence me being here, now, and the words “Belgium”, “hand grenade” and “school trip Scottish public school massacre” not having entered ghoulish public folklore. There was just a short, stunned silence, and then he was dead-legged into the ground and somebody stole his shoes.

Yesterday the Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, was launching some sort of plan to make it easier for schools to organise trips, along with a “kitemark” scheme to ensure their safety. I wonder if our Belgium trip would have made the grade. I hope so. Because, bombs aside, this was not a poorly supervised trip. Take a bunch of kids to a battlefield, and let them wander around, and bombs are almost a given. Indeed, any school trip is fraught with all sorts of dangers, even if there aren't any bombs for miles.

From that one, for example, I also remember that it is pretty easy to buy gin in Bruges, even if you are 13, and the grim, chalky taste of my second-ever cigarette. With equal clarity, though, I remember that the Allied trench was often just a stone's throw from the German one, and the rows and rows and rows of gravestones devoted to similar boys, maybe a bit older, who came across similar bombs and weren't so lucky. And I doubt I'll ever forget any of it.

Put out more flags

If our society really is broken, how is it going to look once it is fixed? What will David Cameron's Britain include that Gordon Brown's does not?

For some reason, the word that initially springs to mind is “bunting”. I'm struggling, properly, to get a handle on how the Tory leader feels Britain should be, but his talk of caring, community spirit and loving thy neighbour (unless thy neighbour objects to thy wind turbine) makes me think of nothing so much as a jolly old-fashioned street party. Like they had on VE Day, with everybody coming together. And bunting.

Although the scene needs a little updating. Out go the grey cardigans and ties and the fake nylon lines painted down legs. In comes DayGlo H&M and Boden. Less spam and boiled eggs, more ciabatta bread and organic cheeses. And, of course, this would be an ethnically diverse VE day. The local urban vicar would still be in charge, perhaps, but Ekon and Sanjay from the underprivileged kids' boxing gym would carry all the chairs, Postman Piotr could be the DJ and the local imam could do the tombola.

Where does this all come from? Well, I have a theory. The most powerful bit of Cameron's speech at the Conservative conference was the bit about Labour seeing the world as containing the State and individuals, with nothing of any value existing in between. This is very true, but also unsurprising. With new Labour, legislation was the answer to every question. That was because most of them were lawyers. A government of priests would pontificate and pray, and if hacks ruled the world we'd place our faith in publicity. Outside politics, David Cameron has only worked in television. So maybe that's why his instincts tend towards EastEnders and Pigeon Street.

Odour of publicity

Spare a thought, if you have any left, for Roan, the eight-year-old son of Sharon Stone and her ex-husband Phil Bronstein, and the subject of a custody battle that Stone has just lost. According to the ruling, published in San Francisco, the actress once suggested her son should have Botox in his feet to stop them smelling, and decided he had a spinal condition when he was actually suffering from constipation.

So, Sharon Stone is evidently a bit mad. What is also a bit mad, though, is that we know any of this. What sort of system delivers a ruling on the best interests of a child, while simultaneously telling the world that said child has stinking feet and trouble going to the loo?

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