SCHOOLGIRL Glynis Hartley thought she was in hot water when she knocked her swimming certificates down the canteen lift shaft during a school presentation day.

So the worried 11-year-old kept quiet about the disaster. But, 35 years later she recounted the tale to workmates at town centre office of Bolton's Employment Service.

And by an eerie coincidence, the same day Glynis received a telephone call to say her old school was trying to trace her through the BEN to return the lost certificates! And yesterday Glynis Brown, a 46-year-old mum of two grown-up children from Astley Bridge, went back to Church Road Primary School in Smithills to be reunited with her certificates one again.

"I have had a wonderful time, but the way it happened was a bit spooky," she said after the ceremony in morning assembly.

"Last Thursday they were moving a lift hoist at work and someone came across papers from years ago.

"I was saying that one day someone would find my swimming certificates at the bottom of a lift shaft.

"That night my sister rang to say the school had found them and were trying to trace me."

Glynis propped the certificates - for swimming 25 yards and 250 yards - against the shaft and knocked them down when she stood up to tie a ribbon around a cup during her last day at the school in July 1960.

Workmen recovered them while renovating the kitchens and headmaster Chris Gough successfully traced Glynis through the BEN's community pages and invited her back to collect them.

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