I’VE just come across a grim, very grim indeed, reminder of a terrible series of events that began in this month in 1988 – Echo newspaper clippings about the terrifying incidents involving the mystery person who became known as the Barling Bomber.

He – or she – began a campaign by blowing up a new £300,000 house in the village.

The home was one of three in a development that had seemingly provoked deep anger – and, then, perhaps violent action – amid speculation someone was bitterly opposed to any new changes to the ancient local scene.

There had been opposition to the go-ahead for building on green belt land. There were reported acts of vandalism, including damage to diggers.

Then came the bombing – and widespread focus and speculation about Barling and whomight possibly be the Bomber.

I knew as a local newspaperman of various rumours and some fingerpointing, those distant years ago, and recall when pieces of the bomb were recovered from the new home’s wreckage, scientists were rumoured to have considered it may have been made by someone with much knowledge of chemistry.

Few facts were publicly released.

Then, a lengthy period of silence was followed by yet more rumours come early 1991, when the then Great Wakering Yacht Club moved its new barge clubhouse to next door Little Wakering and it soon was destroyed by a fire officially described as suspicious.

Later that same year a Barling barn close to completion in a then £100,000 conversion, was torched. And in April 1994 the Barling Tip – which I, like untold numbers of householders from in and around Southend and neighbouring areas had used for years as our garden waste dump – suffered an arson attack.

The total cost of damage was estimated at that time as about £1million.

Earlier, locks on gates at the site had been superglued.

A police spokesman said there had never been any witnesses to the incidents, all of which happened in the dead of night.

Friends of our family have lived peacefully and happily for years in the area where the shocking incidents of long ago brought the unwelcome local and national headlines and attention.

The Barling Bomber – as the mystery he or she became known – may of course by now be long gone. Or, perhaps, be still living locally, in the peaceful surroundings that have avoided the vast and extensive changes to neighbouring places.

I began my newspaper career long before Barling made headlines for so shocking and uncharacteristic a reason. But I did manage to bring part of that neighbourhood, Little Wakering, to national attention.

As an indentured, trainee reporter on the old Southend Standard, I learned that the then local vicar had a night job as a watchman at the Kursaal amusements park – to boost the clerical pension on which he, his wife and family depended.

When my story appeared in print, national newspaper reporters flocked to the village and it briefly hit the big, bold headlines long before the mystery bomber attracted unwelcome attention to it.

Ah, yes – memories, memories. Some bad. Some good.