growing up in a world without nonces.

Except that there were nonces, really. The Moors Murders had just happened and a young girl called Mary Bell murdered two toddlers less than half a mile away from my nursery in 1969.
What I mean is that the red-topped tabloids were still a few decades away from whipping the nation into a state of paedo-hysteria when I was a kid, so at least we got to play outside without our parents becoming convinced that we'd be raped or murdered, which is a luxury that today's children have all but lost.
Anyway, the gang of kids I knocked around with had everything. There was a funny fat kid who was surely going to grow up to be gay (and did), an easy girl who would show you her fanny in exchange for one Bazooka Joe bubblegum (or two Blackjack chews), a spoilt, only-child kid with about 30 action men plus all the vehicles, and a thieving kid who would regularly dip his mam's purse and buy us all treats from the Mister Woods the Grocers.
Most importantly, there were also a load of slightly older kids kicking around, which meant that we were safe against any attacks from the marauding, Catholic kids who all came from huge families and lived just across the main road from us.
Quite why all the Catholic kids lived in a ghetto (albeit a markedly middle-class one), I'm not entirely sure - it's not as if there was a sectarian divide in place in Fenham during the late 60's and early 70's, but they did all live right next to each other. You didn't fuck with the Catholics, largely because they all had five rock-hard big brothers who would bray you if you did.