We go bargain-hunting in September’s Down Your Way magazine – always a bargain in itself. Mike Silkstone takes us around the salesrooms of his younger days when he was wheeling and dealing and Rodney Tennant (pictured), a former national auctioneer of the year, tells how he radically overhauled a fourth generation family business to create one of the top auction houses in the North. 

Roy Hampson finally realises a lifelong ambition to be a ‘BBC Light Programme announcer’ – only he’s broadcasting from his market stall!

We’re looking for a good home for a massive colour print of the old Marygate area of Wakefield, and in our popular Yorkshire Roots we learn about two families with North American links.

And don’t get left behind by the hi-tech generation; we’ve prizes of basic computer guides to be won.

Coming next month – October – we interview the Forces’ Sweetheart herself, Vera Lynn, in our Home Front special, and find her initial reaction to the declaration of war – ‘There goes my career!’ – couldn’t have been more wrong.

We’ve the usual sprightly memories and letters. Don’t miss out… on sale 25 August

About this time of year, when I was a child growing up in Batley, I would be looking forward to the ‘club trip’. It was an exciting time for working class youngsters who would rarely get away from the town during the year. We would go by bus or train to the coast – east or west – we didn’t really care and I don’t remember thinking ‘I hope it’s a great sunny day’… it didn’t matter, we would be on the beach, paddling in the freezing sea, having an ice cream, seeing the bright lights of the amusement arcades… we were easily pleased in those days! Do you have any special summer memories?

It’s a seaside special in August’s Down Your Way as we put up those deckchairs, lick an ice cream and get sand between our toes.

We reveal the oversight after a cloudburst that scuppered one of Scarborough’s top attractions – the naval battle in Peasholm Park.

We revel in magical holidays – all humble but hugely enjoyable – on the East coast during the 1950s.

Poet Pam Ayres lets us in on the secret of how she learns all those lines of poetry – with a little help from a four-legged friend.

And we hear how a schoolboy summer camp in Nidderdale led to a lifelong love of the hills.

We’ve your excellent letters and Yorkshire Roots queries as per usual – and you can win a Night at the Grand in our special competition.

Don’t miss it – it’s out on July 26.

Christine Hulme, of Pontefract, has named the two ladies in flowered pinafore dresses pictured in May’s issue (No 149).

Her father Jack Hulme took the picture and the two ladies are the Morgan sisters. 

She says: ‘When my father was nine he had a very bad accident at school and ended up being crippled. Well, those two ladies looked after him sometimes and if my gran or grandad couldn’t take him to the hospital, they used to take him. Those two ladies were very special and my father thought the world about them. 

‘I just thought you might want to know the story behind the picture, which was taken in the early 1920s’.

There are more Yorkshire Roots queries and answers – and more real memories by real Yorkshire folk – each month in the magazine.

Barry Cryer is still cracking the gags and touring the country to sell-out audiences. The Leeds-born funnyman tells Maggie Poppa about his fifty years in comedy in July’s Down Your Way magazine – and which famous magician influenced his early career.

The astringent smell of chrysanthemums brings the morning Britain declared war on Germany back to Patricia Roberts. She explains what other fragrances arouse her memories.

Peter Flanagan believes he learned much about country life and growing up when as a twelve-year-old in 1958 he went pea-picking in south Yorkshire.

And Elaine Wortley remembers the Queen of the Nags Head at Ainley Top, pub landlady Sarah Clough who had forty glorious years there. 

In Yorkshire Roots we need your help to find out about the Flint family and to reunite penpals, plus we mark the thirtieth birthday of Wharfedale Family History Group.

Ilkley comes under our Spotlight photo where happy residents party to celebrate VE Day in 1945.

Not all modern electronic contraptions are a waste of time. Take the mute button on the TV remote for example. What a boon for people like me who can’t stand the constant drone of horns which accompanies every World Cup match! Do you remember the old wooden rattles we used to take to the match? Considered a dangerous weapon today of course. I remember going to Hillsborough back in 1966 to see Switzerland in the World Cup – maybe it’s just time playing tricks but I seem to recall all-action games, no play-acting and a lot less passing backwards. What do you think?

RIPLEY CASTLE has been in the family’s possession for seven hundred years, and in May’s Down Your Way, Sir Thomas and Lady Ingilby talk about being keepers of this ancestral home and the teamwork it involves.

We have more of your magical memories – the dread of auditioning for club concert secretaries, a nurse’s work in a Bradford woollen mill in the 1950s, the fabulous times going to dances in the 1960s at Beverley’s Regal ballroom, and the Sheffield barber and black market king who could put his hands on most things in the 1930s and ’40s.

Alan Black and team staged a second Window to Your Past in Wakefield and we have pictures and reaction from the event which attracted people in their droves.

We look back to your Yorkshire Roots, have the usual lively postbag and Dear Averil responses, and we preview Haworth’s hugely successful 1940s Weekend, now in its fifteenth year and pulling in more crowds than ever before as the Brontë village turns the clock back to the nation’s finest hour.

Wedding days are supposed to be one of the happiest of our lives… but you wouldn’t think so from the faces of this bunch. Yes, it’s my mum and dad’s wedding in 1938… well there was a war on – maybe smiles were rationed! Still, the marriage lasted over 50 years so it can’t have been all bad!

Paul