The dictionary version of the word 'nostalgia' is 'a yearning for past circumstances, events, etc'. There was an awful lot of it about at Horwich RMI Club.

The occasion was a Glenn Miller/1940s night in aid of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, that splendid organisation, founded in 1824, which exists to save lives at sea.

The organisers had put in a great deal of time and effort to ensure the atmosphere was as realistic as they could manage, with flags, bunting, balloons and ration books. A number of people turned up in uniform or outfits from the era.

I don't know how many in the packed hall had endured the Second World War (1939-45) as serving members of His Majesty's forces.

A good percentage were, like me, in their mid to late 60s, who were children when World War Two was raging.

Though we were spared the horror of combat, we remember the sirens, the searchlights, the drone of bombers overhead and the thud of explosions as Manchester, particularly Trafford Park, took a pasting.

Some have particularly vivid memories. For example, my mum and dad, my three brothers and I made a very hurried and not particularly dignified exit from Springfield Road, Kearsley, after a lone German bomber pilot mistook the flat roof of the nearby Co-op for something more strategic than a food store and flattened it with a high explosive.

On the other hand Fritz could have been in a hurry to get back home and thought: "Sod it," I'll get rid of this lot and turn round." Who knows.

We fled only as far as Plodder Lane, Farnworth, and had another Co-op at the end of our row, which struck me as being akin to a death wish as the Hun seemed to have a grudge against the Co-operative Society's premises.

Happily nothing similar to Springfield Road happened and in later years, along with other excited kids, I watched endless columns of British tanks and army trucks heading up Plodder Lane, presumably destined for Europe.

However, the opening of last Friday's splendid concert by the Smithills School Big Band, while atmospheric in the extreme, did induce a certain element of unease in the portion of my anatomy next to my chair.

We had an air raid siren, searchlights and the soundtrack of planes and exploding bombs. A rum trip down memory lane and a question mark over nostalgia, as I can't believe anyone would yearn for those past events -- with the possible exception of the black marketeers, who made fortunes from ration-busting during and immediately after the war.

The apprehension soon passed and for the next three and a half or so hours, I absolutely wallowed in nostalgia, swept along by the music, much of it the work of the legendary Glenn Miller, posted missing in action on Christmas Day, 1944, ten days after the aircraft in which he was flying to France disappeared over the English Channel.

Chris Wormald, head of music at Smithills, directed the band and kept up a steady stream of banter to put the audience, and the young musicians, at ease. There were guest singers, gags and invitations to dance, gleefully accepted by couples who jammed the small area left for this purpose.

Brian Thompson, one of the principal architects of this splendid evening, is a jazz enthusiast, ever-present at virtually every gig and concert staged in Bolton and Wigan. He is treasurer of the Farnworth and Kearsley branch of the RNLI and a caring and decent man, one of the nicest you could meet. I was genuinely delighted that this concert, a joint promotion between the Bolton and Farnworth and Kearsley branches of the RNLI, was so markedly successful.

The special commemorative programmes were well-produced and the ration books, outlining one person's weekly share, must have given the younger members of the audience something to ponder, as well as affording the Golden Oldies a chance to ruminate that it was practically impossible to suffer from high cholesterol in those harsh but almost fat-free days. The figures are well worth repeating here:

Bacon or ham: 4oz.

Butter: 4oz.

Sugar: 12oz.

Tea: 2oz.

Preserves: 2oz

Cheese: 1oz.

Margarine and fats: 6oz.

Sweets: 2oz.

Tinned foods: four points.

Meat: 1s 10d (equal to 9 new pence).

One follow-up from the 40s night at Horwich, which totally lit up my weekend, was a story in the Sunday Telegraph that pop Svengali Simon Fuller, creator of the Spice Girls, and Nigel Lythgoe, the man behind the phenomenally successful ITV programme Popstars, have teamed up to launch a Glenn Miller-type sound and recreate the big band era.

They have set aside a £6 million budget for the project, apparently motivated by the idea that young people are bored with dancing by themselves and want to take to the floor arm in arm.

Wonderful. Bolton Palais revisited. I can't wait. All I need is to shed another couple of stone and regenerate the 'Tony Curtis' hair style. Will anyone mind if it's the wrong colour and there isn't much of it?