I grew up in Egerton Street, Bolton, behind the Iron Church on Blackburn Road," writes Mr Stanley Covell, of Moorfield Grove, Bolton.

"My father had a very old box camera which took a size of 116 roll of film. I was fascinated by it, and wondered how it took pictures.

"Father would take family photographs, usually in the back street, then take the roll of film to the chemist to be developed.

"On Blackburn Road, in a row that we called the 12 shops, was a newsagent called Clark's; they also sold a cardboard contact frame complete with a negative and a few sheets of contact paper. You placed a piece of the contact paper behind the negative, exposed it to some light, and you would end up with a positive print. However, because this print was not developed it would gradually go very dark. I tried everything to fix the image, but without success.

"When I started school at Castle Hill, I joined a photographic class run by one of the teachers, and it was there that I learned how to develop and print photographs. For Christmas, my parents bought me a complete darkroom kit.

"After Christmas I went back to school but could not get into the photographic class, so I joined a class to learn about radios. although this was interesting, it was not what I wanted, and I mentioned it to my father. One day, the teacher who taught photography came into the radio class and asked me if it was right that at home I had a complete dark room. In that case, 'What are you doing here?'

"I was back in the photographic class at last, and for the rest of my schooldays stayed there. I won a school prize several times for this subject, which became my hobby for life. Later, over a period of 26 years, I taught the subject to hundreds of Cub Scouts throughout Bolton."

Mr Covell goes on: "At the bottom of Ullswater Street was a place where rubbish was burnt or destroyed. It was down the hillside of this tip of ashes, which ran down towards Tippings Road, close to the old Bolton Power Station, where as children we would play.

"One day I was sliding down the hillside on an old shovel. I was travelling too fast, and tried to stop myself by grabbing some grass with my left hand. The problem was that the grass was very rough and sharp, and cut my hand. Blood started to spurt out of the wound, and I held my hand to my chest to stop the blood.

"When I got home I knocked on the door, which was opened by my mother. By this time the front of my shirt was saturated in blood, and she looked at me with horror, then fainted in the doorway.

"When she came to, she realised that it was only my hand that had been cut, and I got a real telling off. I was dragged in to the house, my hand clean, washed and then dressed. Then I was told to never, ever, do that again.

"To this day, 50 years on, I still have the scar on my left hand to show for it."

On another subject, Mr Covell writes: "One of the most detested and unnecessary things in a boy's life is to be made to have a bath. What is the point of getting clean, only to get dirty again? Of course, mothers don't think like that, and an intelligent boy does not go against his mother's wishes.

"Our house was two-up and two-down, no bathroom, and a toilet at the bottom of the yard. The tin bath was hung on a nail on the back yard wall, was brought indoors on bath days, filled with hot water. When the rigmarole of having a bath was over, the bath had to be emptied, dragging the bath to the back door and tipping the contents out into the yard.

There was no heating in the kitchen, and on cold days having a bath was getting in and out as fast as possible! As soon as you finished, it was into the front room, getting in front of the coal fire as soon as possible.

"An alternative to having a bath at home was to go to the slipper baths at Moss Street. I never went there for a bath, but to swim in the large pools. People would also take clothes to be laundered, which they had to do themselves. All the facilities for washing were provided, with the exception of washing powder, which you provided yourself.

"My mother washed all our clothes at home, in the copper boiler, or in a dolly tub complete with scrubbing board, using Knight's Castile, Lanary, a type of bleach, soda and washing powder."