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As an office junior, 65-years ago, Lorna Butcher still recalls the fear she felt when carrying out her lowly duties of collecting tea for the staff and delivering messages and mail.

For, after leaving Pear Tree School during the Second World War, she worked at International Combustion, in Sinfin Lane, where the company was making boilers for Russia.

“I had to pass through the plate shop which was next to our office and I can still hear the terrible noise as the workmen hammered the huge sheets of metal. It was deafening. I was quite small and it used to terrify me,” she laughed.

Lorna (nee Dack), 79, of Chellaston, worked in the production office which she thinks was next door to the drawing office pictured above.

“Looking at the photograph took me back so many years and brought back so many memories,” she said.

Until she suffered a stroke a few years ago, Lorna led a very active life – walking, cycling, gardening and driving. She has climbed Ben Nevis and Snowdon and rode her bicycle until her later years.

Another recent item in the Evening Telegraph's Bygones section that caught her eye last week when contributor Stuart Haywood, of Church Gresley, wrote about his childhood years in 1930s.

An accompanying picture showed a group of small boys playing and Lorna wanted to point out that they were not playing leapfrog but a similar game called Lappity Lappity 1-2-3.

“The picture brought back memories of an era when children could play without adults and teachers worrying all the time about their welfare. As the writer said, we could explore at will, which, sadly, today’s generation cannot,” said Lorna.

Lappity was a game in which one child stood at the front of several others, who bent over while the rest leapt on to their backs. The idea was for as many children as possible to get aboard before the whole lot collapsed in a heap.

“They would fall about laughing and it is so sad that today all that sort of fun seems to have gone out of children’s lives,” said Lorna.

“I lived in Addison Road and I suppose we irritated people by playing in the street but we didn’t do anything to upset them.

“We did play some loopy games and, sometimes, the local bobby would come after us and we’d run away as fast as we could.

“Those were the days when the police could give naughty boys a clip around the ear, which they wouldn’t dare do today.”

One of the most disappointing memories of Lorna’s young life was when she passed the 11-plus examination and was offered a place at Homelands Grammar School but her parents did not think it was worth her while going.

“I remember I broke my heart,” she said.

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