LAST week, in the pre-Christmas edition of Memories, there was a notable famine of festive fare in that all we had was a picture of a snowplough in Teesdale, a misty view of a Christmas tree on High Row in Darlington, and a reproduction page of Christmas Eve adverts from 150 years ago. Instead, we offered you pieces on cricket, Egypt and death by drowning at Whorlton.

So for our first post-Christmas edition, Bishop Auckland historian Tom Hutchinson has very kindly stepped into the breach and offered some appropriate scenes from his collection. They are largely postcards from the first couple of decades of the 20th Century when the postcard was the equivalent of a Tweet or the Facebook post. Several of the cards are adorned with personalised messages written in glitter pen.