Much of our early life is stored in the loft, including the children's toys and books that they have outgrown. On request from Miss Flum we were delving into the past looking for a particular book which, of course entailed examination of many boxes of unrelated Stuff.

Thus did I come across this box of microscope slides, prepared during class while studying 'A' level Biology in 1963.

The subjects include plant and animal material of 'paramecium', 'obelia', 'nerve cord and cerebral ganglion of earthworm', 'striated muscle'. The odd 'square' is a smashed coverslip over the 'mouth part of cockroach' - presumably the microscope lens got a bit too close to that one. The specimen, labelled 'hair', is from my mother - hard to think that she was then two years older than Miss Flum is now... .

All I now need is a microscope to view them and, just by coincidence, we gave such an item to the Flumlet last year, so I'm hoping for a demonstration when I see him next week.