Local history writer Bel Austin worked as a reporter for the Times Guardian from 1950 to 1955 and then again from 1975 to 2000.Here she looks back at her time.

When I joined the paper, Joe Morris was editor and there were two reporters - Colin Steele and I shared a typewriter and a phone in a top room above the shop in the High Street. At the back was the linotype and a bookbinding business.

When Ronald came, he and I didn't get along too well and I went to North East Kent Times (NEKT), where my office was a section of a tobacconist shop at 6 High Street, Sheerness.

Married with disabled daughter Sharon and her younger sister Linzi to care for, I became a full-time mother, but still wrote bits for the Times Guardian.

In 1975, after 11 years working for Abbotts, during which time I helped produce the in-house

newspaper, I was invited to return to the Times Guardian by Mrs Coleman and Peter.

I accepted and worked with editor Geof Malone and sub-editor Roger Fowle and alternated between periods in Faversham and Sittingbourne, where we launched the Sittingbourne Extra in 1976.

During this time I worked with chief reporter Jackie Fowle, reporters Glenda Johnson, John Nurden, John Hammond, Jan Thom, Philip Cole, Jane Eggleston, Caroline Owen, Shirley May, political reporter Roger Hermiston, angling writer Tony Reed and sports reporter Garry Nutting.

From 1987, when the KM took over, I worked under editor Duncan Marsh and with Sittingbourne Extra editor Peter Mastin, news editors Lynda Mitchell, Jill Prescott-Decie and Jon Parker.

Sports reporters were Mark Bristow and Mike Rees and the news reporters were Caroline Owen,

Judith Webb and Alan Rook. Les Brightman, Colin Bourner, Terry Scott, Marcia Newman, Barry Hollis and Mike Whiting were photographers. I retired in 2000 but have since enjoyed writing the Memory Lane page.