LOOKING Back's archives came to the rescue of 73-year-old East Lancashire exile Bob Pearson (bottom-right) in Australia with this 1927 view of Blackburn's Boulevard (main picture) busy with old-time trams and buses, wire-wheeled taxi cabs and open-top charabancs.

For former Army regular, ex-prison officer and one-time TV soap opera extra Bob was desperate for a pre-war picture of his old home town to go with the book he has written -- soon to be published in Australia -- about growing up as a youngster in Blackburn and Clayton-le-Moors.

Indeed, Looking Back has helped him before with the project -- with responses to his appeal here last year for information on the smokescreen that was used in wartime to obscure Clayton's factories from German bombers.

Bob, who settled in Australia with his family more than 30 years ago and lives on the sunny Central Coast north of Sydney, had only vague memories of the devices that produced clouds of black smoke. But readers not only filled in lots of details about the equipment and the soldiers who operated it, one even supplied this precise drawing (top-right) of the system's oil-burning "chimney-stack" stoves and their dimensions.

Originally, intended to be called "Bobbie's War," his book's title has now been changed to "A Penny On Friday." But although at this stage it will only appear in Australia, its recollections of the life Bob knew when he lived in Bastwell Road, Blackburn, and in Clayton, where he moved at the age of 12 in 1941, would trigger memories for many older folk. Bob's boyhood came to a close when he joined the Forces as an under-age teenager in 1945 at the close of the Second World War, beginning an Army career that lasted 17 years.

One of his chapters is devoted to the day the conflict began on September 3, 1939, when Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain broadcast to the nation that Sunday that Britain was at war with Germany.

Then a 10-year-old pupil at Cedar Street primary school in Blackburn, Bob tells how he -- and other youngsters -- reacted.

"As my mind registered the word 'war,' I felt such exultation," he writes, "that it might as well have been the announcement for the summer holidays or Christmas all rolled into one...I ran into the street shouting 'Hey, everybody, it's war, it's war! There's a war on! Hurrah! Children dashed towards me and my news was greeted with resounding cheers, the children jumping up and down with sheer joy, none of us realising the awesome implications...Children dashed inside the house and out again, brandishing what toy weapons they could; men and women were standing talking in groups with worried looks on their faces...The children, with 'shouldered' guns or whatever weapons we could find -- some with long brooms, one with a poker -- marched up and down the street, finally assembling into one group.

"We all wanted to play 'war' but no-one wanted to be the enemy. We spent that day playing war games and marching about the place."

Another thrill came a few days later, when Bob saw Cedar Street school close down for two days while it was turned into an A.R.P. (Air Raid Precautions) Centre, complete with sandbagged entrances and the windows criss-crossed by gummed tape to cut down the possibility of flying glass from panes shattered by bombs.

"At first, I thought school was to be abolished because of the war, but I was disappointed," he adds.

However he recalls that, to his delight, lessons were interrupted for A.R.P. drills which the children practised regularly, donning gas masks and marching to the red brick air raid shelters that were erected in the school.

"We were taught a poem to describe the types of poisonous gas we might encounter, should the Germans decide to use them," he relates. "I cannot remember the poem, except some of the lines, I believe, ran: 'Cyanide smells like almonds chlorine smells like bleach; mustard smells like pear drops."

Another of Bob's wartime memories is of the formation in 1943 of a Cadet Force Band in Clayton-le-Moors, under the banner of the East Lancashire Regiment.

"I became a side drummer," he writes. "I was deliriously happy and even my memories give me a feeling of ecstasy. I am sure that in my happy state, at times, I must have thanked Hitler for starting the ball rolling...

"I cannot express the feeling of pride we had when marching around. We were all 10 feet tall."