the picture of the tram shelter at the junction of Beaconsfield Road and Preston Drove (The Argus Weekend, December 15) brought back memories.

One incident I can recall was when I was about eight years old. On a dark November evening, at about 5 pm, my father asked my brother (who was 15 years old) and I to go to the newsagents to get him an ounce of Digger Mixture pipe tobacco.

As my mother was cooking herrings, we were eager to get the tobacco and hurry home for tea. Off we both went, out into the dark and misty evening.

We got the tobacco okay but it was not until after tea that my father asked us for it. I looked at Eric and he looked at me. We both turned out our pockets, but no tobacco.

An angry response from my very large mother was that we were both to return and find that packet: "Your father does not pound the streets for you to go out and lose eightpence" (He was a Brighton policeman with a weekly wage way below £5.)

We returned to the shop to see if we had left it there, to no avail. On the return trip, as we crossed the tramlines, we noticed a very flat packet of tobacco laying in them.

For the rest of the evening, my brother and I sat, not talking, sorting tobacco from silver foil.

Goodness only knows how many trams ran over it, seeing they ran every 15 minutes. It was well and truly crushed.

I think my father smoked a lot of paper with his Digger Mixture that evening.

-John Chisnall, Bognor Regis