REGARDING Margo Grimshaw's column, (LET, August 13), I was brought up in Blackburn and remember many of the places she mentioned.

However, my memories of the people and events are somewhat different. I don't have rose-tinted glasses -- surprising, because they often come with old age: I'm 76 now.

Factories had camaraderie, of sorts, but it was born of poverty and boredom, as was the friendship of the cramped, two-up, two-downs that many of us endured.

As soon as we could, we escaped both the factories and the terraced houses. I doubt whether your writer still lives in one.

The Boulevard is no longer full of buses, because that's another thing we escaped -- cold, dark, unreliable public transport.

Nostalgia often clouds people's judgments, few of us would wish the conditions we endured in our grandchildren.

HILDA JAMES, Pleasington Grove, Burnley.