I was looking for an alternative to stamp collecting, when my mother reminded me that we still had some old Festival of Britain postcards in the attic. I thought, there's a nice thing - surely nobody else collects Festival of Britain? And it went on from there.
I did go to the South Bank Exhibition. I was 17 and waiting to get my call-up papers to do my national service. My most striking memory was standing underneath the Skylon. It's always stayed in my mind, as have the vibrant colours, and the huge queues. The capacity of the Dome of Discovery was 4,000, but the queue to get in was two miles long. In my collection, I've got old snaps of the Festival - with people, like ants, everywhere.
At first, I just collected postcards, but through going to fairs, I met other like-minded people. One of them invited me down to a talk with Abram Games (the designer who created the famous Festival symbol) at the Portsmouth philatelic society. Afterwards, I was having a cup of tea and a chat, with some of the people there, and we hit on this idea to form a Festival of Britain society.
That was over 10 years ago, and now we've got 150 members. Some joined just because they were born in 1951, or worked at the Festival, but about half of us are serious collectors. My main interest is in ephemera: the books, the guides, the postcards, but I collect anything I can find with a Festival of Britain connection. The most unusual items are a beer sign, advertising special Festival beers, and a beautiful bit of wrapping paper. The most precious is a signed Abram Games poster.
I've also got two tablecloths, nine headscarves and 40 badges with the Festival symbol on. I think I'm up to 40 powder compacts. I've got the Skylon Biro pen, the classic Wedgwood mug (they are worth about £300, now), the Poole pottery plate with Festival of Britain 1951 written on it - a very collectable piece. I'd like more posters, but they are way out of my league, now. When I bought mine, I paid £14 for it, Christie's recently sold one for £700. I like the personal mementos, as well as the collectables, like people's personal photographs. We didn't own a camera then - in the war years, it just wasn't on, you had to have a licence. At the Festival they superimposed a picture of yourself on to one of four or five different views of the exhibition. They put it in a little cardboard frame decorated with the Games symbol. I wish I'd done one now.