The Christian Herald

My mum was a dreadful hoarder - far, far worse then me. Following her death my younger sister has been wading through the stuff in mum's house and picking out stuff for each of us while the vast bulk has gone straight to the tip. As she was down for Jemma's wedding she brought me two boxes of stuff and I thought I'd take a quick look. I'm sure that I'll blip some of the treasures as you might be interested in programmes from my school plays more than 40 years ago or a letter offering me a job in 1980 but this immediately took my attention.

You might not be able to read the date - it's Thursday, December 25th, 1941 and the full title of the paper is "The Christian Herald and signs of our times and radiant youth". It cost twopence. The image which takes up the front page shows three children; two girls and a boy, with Christmas trees. I'm pretty sure that it was taken in the Lake District - probably near Ambleside because the boy in the picture was to become my father and that's where he was evacuated to from Manchester during the war. I've never seen this before but I remember mum mentioning that she had a copy and it's clearly dad based on later photos I've seen of him. I'll be getting this framed.