From our Files: Coastal costs...metal minty...transition tribunal...quality quizzer
50 YEARS AGO
TREMENDOUSLY high costs far above financial resources set aside for coast defence work in 1974/75 will have to be incurred by the council if they wish to build substantial defences at Friars Cliff, borough engineer Mr R Mockridge told Christchurch council’s works committee last week.
The early season gales caused extensive damage to coast defences and repair work has been started. To date it has cost £9,153, £7,353 of which was spent last year, the remaining £1,800 being spent after 1st April 1974.
Coupled with the £1,780 maintenance to defences at Highcliffe a total of £3,670 has already been spent out of an allocation for 1974/75 of £5,250. Therefore, at present time only £1,580 to cover the costs of maintenance and repair along the whole foreshore.
Mr Mockbridge said a further £800 must be spent on the promenade and handrail. The estimate for completing the Friars Cliff defences is a “staggering £14,100.”
Mayor JT Beattie said to “spend £5,000 like this is pouring good money after bad”.
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SEVEN-YEAR-OLD Nicholas Whitren went bait digging with his father in the mud of Lymington River on Sunday when he dug up an old purse.
He showed it to his father Brian, of Boldre, who told him to throw it into the bucket of worms. When they returned home to their amazement the old purse turned out to be a wallet containing £105.
In November 1972 Mr Ray Freeman of Flushards, Lymington, was working on a boat in Lymington Yacht Haven when he lost the wallet containing money he had collected for Christmas.
It lay in the mud until Nicholas found it. “Apart from the terrible smell, the wallet was in good condition,” said Mr Whitren. Mr Freeman gave Nicholas a £10 reward.
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WHEN a nine-year-old Pennington child was eating a mint sweet her tongue was cut. The sweet was found to contain metal. At Lymington Magistrates, Maynards Ltd, of Vale Road, London, were fined £50.
Mr F Stringer, prosecuting for the local authority, said the sweet was one of two ounces which Mrs Betty Bland, of Efford Way, Pennington, had bought at Spencer’s Shop in Pennington.
The sweet was eaten by her daughter. For the company Mr L Secchi said that in 74 years the known number of prosecutions resulting from any foreign matter in the firm’s sweets numbered only three.
How the metal had got into the sweet had been thoroughly investigated but with negative results.
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NEW Milton was becoming a town of estate agents, building societies and supermarkets, because the small shops could no longer meet increasing rents and higher rate demands, newly elected president Mrs Dorreen Rendell told the annual meeting of New Milton, Milford and District Chamber of Commerce.
She said: “The lot of the small trader today is not as happy as they would wish it, and an uncomfortable number of us have gone out of business.”
25 YEARS AGO
THE calculated murder of TV presenter Jill Dando has come as a grievous blow to a retired Highcliffe couple, Dr John Farthing and his wife Barbara – for their elder son Alan was engaged to Jill. The couple were due to marry next September. The morning of Jill’s murder Barbara had phoned her to make surreptitious plans for John’s birthday in May. A tearful Barbara told an A&T reporter: “Jill would have made a wonderful daughter-in-law. Our reaction is one of numbness for Jill was a lovely, natural girl and they made an amazing couple.”
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A NEW Milton woman who lost her £27,000-a-year job five days after telling her boss she was to transition from being a man took her claim for unfair dismissal and sex discrimination to a tribunal court this week.
She had worked for marine surveying company Freeman and Co. in Fordingbridge for two-and-a-half years until she was made redundant in December last year.
The previous month she had told his bosses that she was about to begin gender realignment treatment and in future dress as a woman.
Her boss said that it had come as a “considerable surprise” to him but that was “as a friend rather than an employer.” He denied saying that their institutional clients “would not like it”.
He had told her: “I could not recollect meeting a female yacht surveyor, which is a statement I stand by.”
As most of the woman’s work was office-based, the only problem he foresaw was during the transition process when clients would have to get used to the new name.
The boss said the business was struggling to make money and it was only for financial reasons that the woman had been made redundant.
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NEW Milton’s renowned general knowledge supremo Paddy Sooner, at one time barred from playing quiz machines in pubs and clubs because he was making too much money from them, has scooped £100,000 from the Australian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
The brainy 32-year-old, a former Arnewood pupil who is on a back-packing holiday down under, has previously won a car and a trip to see Father Christmas in Lapland on TV show Sale of the Century.
Paddy was beginning to run short of money in Australia and was thinking of returning home when he saw the chance of getting on the show. He telephoned more than 200 times before his call was answered.
A former local policeman’s son Paddy, who used to represent Sway’s Forest Heath pub in the Whitbread quiz league, decided to take his £100,000 rather than try for the million.
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HAIRDRESSER to the Queen for 27 years Charles Martyn, known to everyone as “Mr Charles”, was buried at Hinton Park Woodland Burial Park with one of Her Majesty’s ladies in waiting representing her at the funeral.
Mr Charles, from Westbourne, died of cancer. He began hairdressing at the Harvey Nicholls store in London and was featured in many magazines including Vogue and Harpers & Queen. His years spent with the Queen are remembered by the Palace and, as well as being popular with royals, he also had many celebrity clients.
He is remembered as always being level-headed and a likeable man. Lady Mary Morrison attended his funeral for Her Majesty.
