Yesterday Remembered

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- Bob Cooper of Macclesfield, Cheshire remembers:

Write on

From an early age, I have always loved reading and writing. My best subject at school was English to the detriment of maths, and I managed to become top in the subject several times. Despite that, my form master, Mr Evans, made comments on my school report like “Robert has not yet reached his full capabilities.” I was bewildered about that and this used to upset me. Mr Evans also took the French class and, because I joined the school late in the term, I lagged behind the rest of the class and came eighth from bottom. At least I came higher than several of the students who had joined at the beginning of the term, so that was a major achievement for me.

After reading a book of poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, I began trying to write poetry when I was about eight years old. Filling many notebooks, all of them were quite private, so I never showed them to anyone for years. One day, I plucked up the courage to show my mother some of them. She liked one, The Neighbourhood I Knew, so she sent it to the Liverpool Echo and, to my surprise, it was published. I earned 10s from that. A few years later, when the family had moved to the Wirral, I started producing a hand typed magazine for my gang from the street we lived in. This consisted of contributions from my friends and, of course, some of my poetry.