Mike Ripley’s obituary of the crime novelist Robert Richardson took me back six decades to when I too was an indentured trainee at the County Express in Stockport. Bob, as we knew him, and I were colleagues for about three years. I was pleased to read about what he went on to do in the local press in Hertfordshire, on national titles and with his books.
When I left Stockport at the end of my apprenticeship my co-workers presented me with a volume of the Complete Works of Shakespeare – Bob’s idea, I suspect. Among all the staff signatures, he added “Hamlet Act I, Scene III” – confirming his school nickname of Bob the Bard. It’s a shame that I didn’t take the advice – “do not sleep, But let me hear from you” – to not be a stranger.
