SOMEWHAT self-indulgent, maybe, but I hope I can be forgiven for regaling readers with my own pleasure and surprise at a recent re-union.

For the first time in half-a-century, I met up again with two chums from happy boyhood days.

It happened when I gate-crashed - by invitation - a garden party get-together of the Class of '51 from the former Worcester Technical High School at the Victoria Institute. The summer event was organised by Tony Bryan in the garden of his Hallow Road home at Worcester.

And there, to my great surprise, I was temporarily re-united with the two boyhood chums. We had not met together since 1952, the year Peter Sarratt left the Faithful City for the South East where he has lived ever since.

He and I were at two Worcester schools together during the second half of the 1940s, latterly at Stanley Road. At the end of each school day, we walked into the city centre where I would catch the Bath Road bus home from the High Street terminal.

Often, however, I would be invited to have tea with the Peter and the Sarratt family in their penthouse flat at the top of the four-storey building on the corner of High Street and Bank Street - today, Barclays Bank.

The penthouse flat went with the job of Peter's father, Bill Sarratt, who was manager of grocers David Grieg Ltd in the High Street shop premises below through the 1930s and 40s. He was, however, called up for service in the Royal Marines during the Second World War, and wife Florence had to step into the breach for a few years as manageress.

I remember vividly that the penthouse flat, particularly a large arched window, commanded superb views over the city rooftops, and I spent many a happy hour there.

So did another lad of our age, David Marston, whose parents, Cyril and Gertrude Marston were friends of the Sarratts.

The Marstons were mine hosts through the 1940s and early 1950s of the Liverpool Vaults - a pub in The Shambles, which has long since disappeared from the city scene.

Dave Marston has lived in the Worcester area ever since and has been in the motor trade locally from the 1960s but, amazingly, our paths have not crossed for many years.

However, both Peter Sarratt and Dave Marston were at Tony Bryan's recent garden party when I dropped in. Tony asked me along as he wanted a plea placed in Memory Lane for some past pupils of Worcester Technical High School from its 1951 two-form intake.

He is anxious to trace a remaining handful of those "old boys" for a big re-union dinner planned for Friday, October 5, at the Diglis House Hotel, Worcester.

Peter Sarratt was only at the technical school for a few months, before his family left for the London area in 1952, though Dave Marston completed his education there, having won a scholarship from Christopher Whitehead Boys School where we were pupils together for a short time.

Obviously, it was a joy to meet up with Peter and Dave again after all those years and to chat over past times. Peter still has a great affection for Worcester even after nearly half-a-century away from it!