Holme Grange School, in Wokingham, updated their computer equipment in 1988, and the News went along to find out pupils were benefitting from being computer literate.

Initially, the youngest children learnt how to navigate a keyboard with the aid of a game called Cat and Mouse, plus making basic graphics with another entitled Star Spell.

A class of 10-year-olds, who had recently advanced to using word processing software, were writing letters and learning how to operate the mathematics programs.

Computers were in their infancy 31 years ago, and a recent national survey had found that only half of pupil’s homes had a computer, with Berkshire, in the heart of ‘Silicon Valley’, falling behind in educating its youngsters.

Bracknell-based company, 3M, were celebrating their tenth birthday by baking a huge cake and sharing it with the children’s ward at Ascot’s Heatherwood Hospital.

The company was also donating money to the hospital’s Accident and Emergency Department and to the West Berkshire Cancer Care Appeal.

In 1978, 3M United Kingdom moved from London to Bracknell and had grown to employ nearly 800 people and (at the time) was ranked the 39th largest company in the world.

Ten months after the official opening of the Novello Theatre in Sunninghill, founder June Rose was celebrating the re-conversion work being completed.

Speaking to the News, she explained:” At times I thought we were never going to get there, but gradually it began to look like theatre, and now we’ve forgotten about all the sleepless nights of worrying!”

The first production to be presented in the re-converted theatre would be ‘Alice in Wonderland’, with Juliette Caton playing Alice, and Adam Stafford as the Mad Hatter.

When Woosehill resident, Susan Buckley, discovered a book on egg decorating at her local library she became hooked and three years later she was at the top of her field.

Susan’s works mainly on goose and small quails’ eggs, and the occasional ostrich egg, which are all infertile and delivered by mail order, already empty and prepared.

Speaking to the News she admitted:” This hobby is getting out of hand, I have always been interested in arts and crafts-at the moment I am working on an ostrich egg with a barometer at the centre.”

Sports-minded youngsters were able to bounce, hit and kick their way through the half-term holiday in 1988, thanks to special events laid on a two local sports centres.

Edgbarrow and Sandhurst centres held fun days for over 200 children, they enjoyed a bouncy castle, trampolining, badminton and table tennis.

Bracknell hosted a divisional final of the Crime prevention Youth Quiz, organised by Thames Valley Police, but a team from the 2nd Crowthorne Guides, who had made it to the final were pipped at the post by a team from Slough.