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A special school exercise book has been returned to its rightful owner after a 40-year wait.

Alfie Gibson, who's now 56, was set a project to draw and write about his hobby as a 13-year-old at the Technical High School in Gorleston by teacher Margaret Crawshaw.

She was so impressed with his stories and illustrations of fishing with his father that she kept hold of the book, but previous attempts to trace the author had failed.

Help recruited

However, Margaret, who's now 94, decided it was now time to enlist some help from her former pupils and BBC Radio Norfolk to find the book's elusive owner.

Miss Cranshaw, now Mrs Paxton and living in Hailsham, Sussex, asked her old students June Dyble and Arthur Bowles to help her reunite the book of work with its creator when they visited her.

They contacted BBC Radio Norfolk and staff managed to trace Alfie.

The book was returned to Alfie at BBC Radio Norfolk's Great Yarmouth studio by Arthur Bowles - who went on to become head of PE at the school and is now a vicar in the town - with Mrs Paxton listening in on the phone from her Sussex home.

For Alfie, it was an emotional moment and he was delighted to rediscover the pages of colourful and detailed drawings.

"It's lovely to see it again," he said. "I feel a bit emotional now. It's lovely that Margaret has looked after it for all these years. I shall treasure it."

Alfie hadn't seen the book since he handed his work in during the early 1960s when Miss Crawshaw was a senior mistress teaching English.

She and other teachers were due to accompany pupils on a trip so in preparation she set one of her classes a task to write about their hobby, and gave them a fresh school exercise book to do it in.

Fishing feats

Keen fisherman Alfie wrote and drew detailed pictures of his trips with his father, calling the 40 pages Fishing Days.

Margaret was very impressed with the quality of his illustrations and captivating descriptions.

"I hadn't see anything written by a child which was such an outstanding piece of work and which was so compelling," she said.

The work was based on Alfie's love of his family's country lifestyle.

"We took up fishing when I was a very young boy of five," he said.

"We were always going round the Broads, Somerleyton and Fritton Lake. I loved drawing the pictures of the fish we caught and writing stories about the days we had."

Miss Crawshaw awarded him a prize - Gerald Durrell's The Overloaded Ark - which Alfie has kept to this day.

The teacher retired in 1976 and remained in Gorleston for another 10 years until through her love of dancing, she met her husband, Ron, and married at the age of 72.

Hard to find

She explained how she'd tried to return books and other pieces of work when she finally left the school, but was unable to trace Alfred Gibson.

The book remained tucked away in a cardboard box which she took to her new home in Hailsham.

Recently she was going through the box looking for something else and came across Fishing Days again.

"As soon as I found it I thought, 'Yes, it must go back to him because it's such a precious book and it's so well done'," she said.

Seeing the book again has prompted Alfie - who has travelled across the country working as a tree feller and woodsman - to collate his illustrated diaries of wildlife and the countryside into one book for prosperity.

He said: "This has inspired me to get my diaries out and perhaps put them down into a book, complete with illustrations. I've always done plenty of drawings and illustrations over the years."