Seven years ago, when I was still a student at Wymondham High, I was strolling around the town centre, when this woman cornered me in the street – in a mad rush – and said without drawing breath:

‘I’ve read your book reviews. They’re really good. The local magazine asks us to submit book reviews for them, and I always forget. Do you want the job?’

This lady worked at Kett’s Books, Wymondham’s glorious independent bookshop, and also happened to be the mother of one of my schoolmates. She was referring to some book reviews I had submitted to the Kett’s Books website.

I used to watch Booktube a lot – the corner of YouTube where people sit in front of a camera and talk about what they’ve read (it’s addictive!). These videos had inspired me to write my own stuff. My early book reviews, like every writer’s juvenilia, were cringeworthy. It was because I was trying to mimic the voice of a YouTuber, which sounds a bit dodgy on paper.

‘HEY GUYS! I’m here today to do a review I didn’t think I would do…but I’ve since decided to do. I’m still not sure if it’s the right thing, really. But I’m going to do it anyway. Please approach this video as a safe space. So, the book I’m talking about today is…’

I still remember the Wymondham High librarian, Emily Davison-Cripps. She was my first ever reader. I would email her these terrible early works, and she was always kind enough to be enthusiastic, regardless of whether what I’d written was good. She was a legend.

I submitted some more polished ones to Kett’s Books. That was how this lady on the street knew who I was. Following that street conversation, I started submitting them to the magazine’s then-editor, Katherine. She was a delight, though we never actually met in person.

Two years later, it was the summer of 2020, and COVID-19 swept the globe. I was in That Year Group whose GCSEs were cancelled on a moment’s notice. They were cancelled on the Wednesday; school was closed on the Friday.

That period was surreal. The exams we had spent the last five years working towards – the ones that feel huge and scary to a fifteen-year-old – were over. Our lives felt upended. We packed a whole Leavers’ Season’s worth of goodbyes and nostalgia into two days. Ironically, it led to more hugging between students and staff than in any other two-day period.

Katherine emailed me a few months later asking if I fancied turning the experience into a news story. I did it. I consider that article my ‘first’ published piece, even though it technically wasn’t. It was the first thing I wrote that was more than a simple ‘please read this!’

That article no longer exists – this predated the magazine’s digitalisation – but it served its purpose. It prompted the transformation of my monthly book review slot into a ‘month-in-the-life’, which then became the Lowe Down.

My early Lowe Downs were focused exclusively on the weirdness of post-COVID Sixth Form life. In the early days of Year 12, we did everything on Zoom, which led to some rather bizarre rules. We weren’t allowed to show our faces or use our audio for ‘safeguarding’ reasons. And when we did French oral sessions, it was a requirement that we weren’t sitting in our bedrooms. Quite why, we never knew – the first rule meant they wouldn’t have seen our bedrooms anyway!

These articles slowly turned into today’s ‘Lowe Down’ columns.

Now that the magazine publishes its 100th edition, I am nothing but grateful for what it has given me. It gave me the discipline of writing something each month, the privilege of being published young, and the double-privilege of having an outlet to voice my often loopy thoughts to local readers. The Lowe Downs became my way of writing about whatever was happening in my life – not something every magazine would have continued publishing. Some of these life moments were quite unpleasant; I wrote one after a traumatic fallout with a student society. Others were just bonkers – the less said about my recent ‘Getting Stood Up’ article, the better…

As I’ve got older, I’ve realised how much this magazine is made by its ensemble of writers – far beyond my contributions. We had Edward Barham’s wonderful ‘Ted Talks’. We have Victoria’s ‘Vic Picks’, and the iconic Photos of the Month from the Photographic Society. We have Neil Haverson and Philip Yaxley’s slices of history, the recent ‘Wymondham Acts of Kindness’ column, and – of course – the Private-Eye-worthy Town Council Watch.

Long may it continue. Small community publication as it may be, these small things do make a difference.