"TWO recent items in Looking Back caught my attention," writes Mr Bill Kay, of Gidlow Avenue, Adlington, "and whilst each of moderate interest in themselves, the two items combined to take me right back to my boyhood days."

"At that time I lived in the area at the bottom of Deane Road, and regularly played in Queen's Park. This took me down Mayor Street, where, just over the railway bridge and on the right hand side of Mayor Street, just opposite Webster's timber yard, was a little shop.

"This shop was run by an old gentleman, and if my memory serves me right it sold only soft drinks (in fact I think it may have been attached to a works making mineral waters).

"Always, either going to or coming from the park I would call in for a drink and there was the choice of either the genuine mineral, or a much inferior but cheaper alternative of a glass of gassy, coloured water from a machine resembling two glass carboys neck to neck. One stood upside down on the other. In later years I found that this machine was called a 'Gasogene' and dated from Victorian times. In fact, readers of Sherlock Holmes stories will be aware that one was kept in his Baker Street apartment. I imagine that the Seltzogene mentioned in Looking Back was the same or similar device, though possibly a trade name.

"And now the second connection. When in Queen's Park I often climbed over the railings around the Chadwick Museum, keeping a wary eye open for the dreaded 'Parky' (park keeper), and on climbing up to the bars on the windows I could peer inside. I remember being able to see several cases of stuffed birds, and also an Egyptian mummy case.

"As this was around 1948, then obviously all the items had not been taken to the new museum at the Town Hall Crescent in the pre-war period."