Introduction

The age of the internet arrived in an explosion of WWW dot messages on radio and TV. It seemed every Tom, Dick and Wogan was in on a secret I knew nothing about. Something to do with computers, I gathered, which was no help at all. A computer was something Doctor Who had; the size of a shed, it had flashing lights and buttons, and sometimes spewed messages like a bus conductor’s ticket machine. 

I remained apathetic when my wife brought a computer home. With no grasp of its capabilities I wasn’t interested. Until I heard about a website that reunited old school friends. Many years had passed since I’d left school and almost as many since I'd left Kent. Upbury Manor was faraway and a long time ago. Could I really get in touch with old school friends, through a computer, in my own home? I was sceptical, but the lure of Friends Reunited was overwhelming and with my wife’s guidance, I joined… and was stunned to see listings of people from another time and another place. 

A one fingered typing speed of six words per minute couldn’t dampen my enthusiasm for trading memories with former classmates. I loved breathing new life into old tales and though it soon became clear that not everyone had the same powers of recall, the cork was out of the bottle and it wasn’t going back. I’ve been writing ever since.

Though Upbury Manor as I knew it ceased to exist long before the bulldozers moved in, my affection endures. Growing up in Gillingham; the 60s; being a pupil at Upbury Manor Secondary School; everything is interlocked and I’m going back to live it all again from the beginning. Not through rose tinted spectacles, but through the eyes of the boy that I was. Perhaps you’ll join me.