SIR: Many thanks for quality pen set I received as a prize for my recent letter of the week. I thought you might be interested to hear that I still correspond with my schoolteacher, 55 years on. I have therefore sent on the pens to her as a tribute to the communicating skills with which she endowed all of us.

This was at St Mary's Primary RC School on Higher Bridge Street. Teaching large classes was not easy as some of the years were wartime etc. We were given discipline when deserved, and standards for life. I remember complaining to my mother - once only - as I received further punishment for causing the trouble in the first place - a far cry from today. How many will recall their school days so much later I wonder, and as happily at that.

Mrs Joan Foster

Jubilee House, Moor Lane, Bolton

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.