LOOKING Back has helped reunite a friendship forged 65 years ago. A plea by 85-year-old Sam Elvin for the whereabouts of a Blackburn girl he knew as Hilda Wearing, at the start of the Second World War, was speedily answered the day after appearing on our page.

Hilda, who is now 83 and still lives in the town, was amazed that the Scottish youth she met on a summer holiday in the Isle of Man in 1939, had remembered her. She was even more astounded he had kept the photograph she had sent of her outside her baker's shop in Bolton Road.

But then she admitted: "I've been looking through my old photographs and I still have some of Sam, too, including one of us on the beach at Douglas."

Added Hilda, who today has six great grandchildren: "It's a bit of a shock. A friend rang to say my photograph was in the Evening Telegraph, before mine had been delivered and there have been several phone calls since.

"But I will write to him, because I remember him as a nice, sincere and lively lad and I did like him.

"We spent a week together and danced every morning at the boys' camp.

"After we went back home, he was going to come down to see me, but in those days the distance was the problem. Travel wasn't as easy as today; I know he managed to borrow a car, but then couldn't get any petrol."

The two wrote for a number of years before finally losing touch and meeting new partners.

Sam, who lives in Glasgow and has four grandchildren and eight great grandchildren, said: "It's amazing that you have managed to trace her and I am really looking forward to hearing from her. We've certainly lots to talk about."