"I began writing The Newcomer in September 1973 over 36 years ago. As I started writing, a great thunderstorm broke out over South East London. I took this as a good omen.

I had started preparing to write the Newcomer within days of Walk in the Wood being first broadcast. I just felt I had to add something to that inconclusive ending. I worked off piles of notes on odd bits of paper, wrote the first draft in longhand on a Walworths lined exercise pad, and typed up the final version on an antiquated Adler electric typewriter.

The setting is a composite of Cobblers Dream, the newer books Follyfoot and Dora at Follyfoot, and of course the TV series.

The story begins after the events in Dora at Follyfoot, with the Colonel still away in foreign parts to recuperate.

The download format is down to the fact that a nearly bald typewriter ribbon and thirty-odd years of ink fade had made chapters 24 and the first part of chapter 25 very difficult to read. I reconstituted a more readable version using the carbon copy, but this required a few drop in edits from the original where the original had been corrected and the carbon simply showed several layers of type-over. The resulting graphic combination made the pdf files for those chapters much larger than the simple scans of the rest. I had tried to scan and OCR the text, but the time involved in correcting the result was prohibitive. Perhaps some day I can get the thing completely retyped. Meanwhile I'd suggest possibly printing out each chapter, if you find it easier to read in a hard copy format than on screen.

Please be kind to my mistakes. I was 18, between school and university. I didn't have a clue as a how to write a book, and I don't think anyone in those pre-internet days had heard of fan fiction. This typescript is unaltered since the 1970s, and comes complete with my original hand drawn title page, the occasional original spelling and grammar usage, and a few pasted over final edits.

There it is. I hope this story, unearthed after all this time, may give a certain pleasure to Follyfoot friends."

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Regards,

P.