A BOOK which was written about High Wycombe in the 1950s has reacquainted the author with his first girlfriend.

The Old Time by John Comer explores his childhood as he grew up in the West Wycombe area during the 1950s until he left to explore pastures new when he was 18.

Through writing the book Comer, 67, has met his first girlfriend, Jean Goodwin from Sands, who he went out with before he left for Leeds University.

After not seeing each other since 1963 they met again after Comer met her first cousin through the Old Boys of the Royal Grammar School's website. She is now called Jean O'Connell and lives in Princes Risborough.

He said: “It was very nice to meet her again and also very weird. A whole lifetime had passed since. She was a 1950s person through and through and I have come from another time. We recognise each other as 50s people.”

There are three sections to the book including The Chiltern Hills and Comer's boyhood territory around Plomer Hill and Branchwood, the Grammar School Boy of his days at the Royal Grammar School and Charmed Lives which sees the beginning of his escape from High Wycombe.

Comer said he started to write the story as children's book for his grandchildren but it turned into an autobiographical novel.

He said: “The book is a patchwork quilt of inspirations from different times of my childhood.

“I never let go of my childhood experience. I have always carried it with me. I had a very vivid childhood of playing in the woods and all the freedom on the 1950s.”

Comer's father was killed in North Africa during the war in March 1943, three months after he was born.

He said: “I was bought up by a single mum. She felt the strain of that. Mum was a very ordinary woman who went around with a bag of hairdressing things to do people's hair- she had no car.”

He added residents from the High Wycombe area will see it as a kaleidoscope of memories and experiences which will be familiar to people who grew up in the post war era.

The book is priced at £6.99 available from Amazon or send a cheque to the author at 65, Greenoak Crescent, Stirchley, Birmingham, B30 2TD.