JUST WILLIAM - AND JOE...

Copyright relevant owner

Back when I was a mere boy circa 1970 or thereabouts, a friend told me about the 'Just William' books by Richmal Crompton.  (It was decades before I learned Richmond was a woman and not a man.)  "They're hilarious" he said - and he was right.  He also told me about 'Alfred Hitchcock & The Three Investigator' books by Robert Arthur, though I'm uncertain as to which of the two series of books he recommended to me first.  I'd actually already read 'The Mystery Of The Green Ghost', but I'm unsure as to whether I was aware there was more than one, but I was soon devouring them with relish.

In the late '70s I avidly watched the Just William TV show and a few years ago bought the DVD box set, which, one night, I took round to the flat of the same friend who'd first told me about the character and we watched a few episodes together.  At some point he bought the two '70s Annuals from a charity shop (might've been before I bought the DVDs, might've been after), which prompted me to buy them from eBay as I'd certainly had the one for 1978 as a teenager, though I'm not sure about the one for 1979.

The friend was Joe, who died back in October, and I've been helping (in a small way) to pack up his stuff to be dispersed to charity shops, the local dump, and to anyone who wants any of it, his friends having had 'first pick' of what was available.  Most of the items I picked were comics I'd given him going right back to the late '70s, though there was a few things which were new to me.  Three or four days ago, I brought round to my house a bunch of books, a couple of which were the same two Just William Annuals he'd acquired a few years back.

And so the circle is complete.  It was Joe who told me about the irascible William Brown nearly 60 years ago, so it seems rather fitting that I now have his William Annuals in my possession to sit alongside my own.  Do I need two copies of each book?  Of course not, but I somehow don't have the heart to dispose of them as being surplus to requirements.  I'm sure Joe would approve.

Has a friend of yours ever recommended anything (books, movies, or albums) to you, which you were glad of, and which has added immense pleasure and enjoyment to your life that you might otherwise never have experienced?  Do tell if you'd be so good.