During a bout of insomnia last night, I started thinking about life in 1951. There was still food rationing in force - certainly for meat and sugar (and therefore sweets etc). Television was still something of a pipe dream, as most early sets were not sold until 1953. Washing machines, dishwashers and even fridges were uncommon - and the telephone was largely limited to business use. No personal computers, internet or mobile phones, and the normal camera was the Kodak Box Brownie.

What started all this was...

Well, let's really start from the beginning. A month or more ago I received an email from a lady who is studying for an MA in anthropology. As part of her studies, she is trying to write a history of Brighton Lions Carnival as an art form. (Beats me how a lions carnival can be seen as an art form, but there you are.) I put her in contact with a long-time member of the club who can recall the very first carnival. He told me the other day that he has had several meetings with the lady and the whole thing is taking a lot longer than I would have expected. He has even spent hours searching through the club archives to turn up a copy of the carnival programme for every year we ran it.

Musing on that in the wee small hours, I thought it might be interesting to read a history of Brighton Lions, perhaps have an article in the Lion magazine to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the issue of our charter - which was (I believe) in January 1951.

And so I started thinking about what life was like back then...