Val Faulkner has never lived down the day she was reported missing.

Aged just three, she wandered off from her home at Wolvercote, Oxford, leaving her parents and other members of the family frantic.

She writes: "During the summer of 1941, I saw my mother walking up the road from our house with one of my brothers, so I set off in pursuit.

"I was told at a much later date that he was suffering with a sticky eye' and had to be taken to the Radcliffe Infirmary.

"Before I could catch up, I saw them board the village bus, so I followed up and over the railway bridge.

"I kept walking until I became tired, then sat down on a warm kerbstone in the sunshine. A lady came along on a bike. She stopped, lifted me on to the saddle and pushed me to a nearby children's home, Hernes House.

"I was given something to eat and later put to sleep with several other small children, some at each end of the bed, under a lovely red blanket.

"I thought this was a nice adventure. At no time do I remember feeling any distress."

Back home, of course, it was a different story. Her mother returned from the hospital to find her missing.

Mrs Faulkner, of Raymond Road, Bicester, recalls: "There were several of the family at home, and each thought the other had charge of me.

"There was a hue and cry, calls were made from our grandmother's telephone across the road, police were involved, and eventually I was located.

"I remember being wrapped in a blanket, and my sister Mary lifting me into a little sports car driven by my uncle and returned home a happy ending to a memorable event."

When the family left England to live in Australia for four years, they called to visit relatives in Perth before settling in Sydney, and Mrs Faulkner was introduced as "the family member who ran away from home aged just three". "I'm still trying to live it down," she said.