Adam Trimingham paints a grim picture of the way we took our holidays in the Fifties (The Argus, August 10).

While this is his view as a visitor to Brighton in those days, as a resident at that time I remember things rather differently.

Yes, there was rationing and shortages but Brighton was buzzing in the late-Forties and the Fifties.

Both piers had been repaired (they had had sections blown out of them during the war to stop them being used as landing stages by the enemy) and were open again.

Volk's Electric Railway had been reconstructed and was conveying happy holidaymakers to the Black Rock swimming pool.

The Sports Stadium (SS Brighton) in West Street offered ice-skating and spectacular ice shows and the Brighton Tigers were playing ice hockey again.

There were six theatres showing professional shows - the Theatre Royal, Dolphin, Grand, Hippodrome, Imperial and Palace Pier.

My own interest in amateur drama was catered for by at least 18 dramatic and musical societies.

We were spoilt for choice of films to see at 16 cinemas and dancing was available at the Regent (over the cinema), Princes Hall (at the Aquarium) and Sherry's in West Street.

There was also open-air dancing on the end of the Palace Pier and at the Hove Bandstand.

Yes, we did roll our trousers up to paddle (no man would be seen dead in shorts in those days), sit in deck chairs and even take our ties off - and we knotted the corners of handkerchiefs to use as hats to protect us from the sun - but we loved it. This was before the era of cheap foreign holidays, so visitors came to Brighton to stay for a fortnight in hotels and boarding houses.

There was full employment and they had money in their pockets. They would go for rides along the front on the open-top cream No 17 buses of Brighton Hove and District or up to Devil's Dyke on the green Southdown buses.

Cheap day return fares to London were on sale for five shillings (25p) and there were equally cheap coach excursions.

This was not a time of misery but of optimism. After six years of war, England was breaking out of the gloom and returning to its traditional playground - the seaside.

-Peter Bailey, Beaconsfield Villas, Brighton