THIS unidentified portrait, right, of another proud young man turned up some years ago among miscellaneous items at a jumble sale.

Presumably he was a drummer in an army cadet band.

Whoever took the photograph probably intended a vertical close-up of the drummer, but by including a horizontal context he or she has transformed a personal snapshot into a bit of social history.

The young man’s sparkling webbing and bulled boots could be described, in 1950s army jargon, as immaculate and this typical local street is equally neat – its flagstones free from weeds, cracks and litter, and with carefully whitened edges to the doorsteps.

The figure glimpsed in the open doorway – presumably his mother – may be wearing a ubiquitous ‘pinny’.