From Our Files: Sweet abuse...Rev to the rescue...pool disgust...winning review
50 YEARS AGO
Angry customers at a New Milton supermarket hurled packets of sugar at assistants when they were told they could not have all the sugar they wanted. “They are just like savages round a bone. Really vicious some of them,” manager of Challenger Supermarket in Old Milton Road, New Milton, Mr F Golledge, told the A&T.
“I’ve never seen some people like it, not even during the wartime rationing. There are one or two not behaving in a civilised manner at all.”
Like many other stores in district coping with the sugar shortage Mr Golledge has been restricting it to 2lbs per customer. At Fulford’s Dairy in Old Milton Roy Fulford blamed the shortage on the publicity it had received.
He said: “Before it was announced a fortnight ago on television that it was short in the West Country, we had no trouble at all. The following two days we had such a run on it that they cleared the shelves of all our stock.
At Fine Fare a manager said “It doesn’t matter how you try to stop you’ll always get it. It’s the greediness of this country. They must have a little bit more than they want.”
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“I am nearly 81 and have been driving since I was 17,” a Burley man told Lymington Bench.
He said he had never had an accident until the one to which the summons against him was the sequel.
Pleading not guilty to driving a car without due care, he was fined £15 and ordered to pay £5 costs. He had collided with a lorry in New Milton. He said the lorry was going fast and he was sure that, had it slowed down, the accident could have been avoided.
Saying that his wife was with him, he said: “I love her very much – my next love is the car. I would never drive in a way that would put it in danger of being damaged.”
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A former curate of Lymington, the Rev Evelyn Chavasse – now living in Kyrenia, Cyprus, with his wife Edith – featured on the front page of three national newspapers as the result of their action in risking their lives in bringing a Greek family and a sick infant to safety.
Mr Chavasse, a retired Royal Navy chaplain with his wife left the comparative safety of their home to collect the Greek family who were too terrified to come out of their house. The Chavasses made their way down a dirt track carrying a Union Jack flag and brought the family out. The baby was taken for treatment to hospital.
Mr Chavasse also gave a Christian burial to two British residents killed in the Kyrenia during the Turkish invasion.
25 YEARS AGO
Local band Blissful Twist have been identified as one of England’s finest new talents. The soft-edged contemporary rockers – Janine Woods, Paul Lanyon, Matti Sparks and Charlie Wise – recently won their heart of the nationwide Undiscovered Originals 1999 band search at Bristol where they played a set of 20 minutes of their own material.
Originally one of 1,162 bands to enter the search for the “best new music for the millennium” Blissful Twist are now ranked in the top 25 and will play at the Southern England regional final. Twenty-five-year-old Lanyon the band’s guitarist and main songwriter told the A&T: “We never expected to win our heat, we just thought it would be a bit of a laugh.”
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Revolting behaviour by swimmers – probably two – who defecated in Lymington’s Sea water baths. It necessitated town clerk Ray Jones to order the immediate draining of the pool’s 1,37-million-gallon contents.
The whole exercise represented an estimated £800 lost revenue for Lymington Town Council. Around four o’clock on Saturday afternoon an attendant lifeguard was notified by a member of the public of excrement floating on the surface of the water.
An attempt was made to scoop up the offensive sewage, but the amount was greater than first thought. The town clerk said: “I was left with no alternative for health and safety reasons but to close the baths and drain the pool on the spot. This began at 4.30pm with the many swimmers uncomplaining when requested to leave.”
He added: “This was appalling behaviour on behalf of a few irresponsible members of the public. It appears more than one culprit was involved, and they have deprived a lot of people a lot of enjoyment on one of the hottest days of the year.”
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New Milton Lion’s Club’s third street market and craft fayre was a huge success with more than £800 being raised for charity. Some 80 stalls and displays filled the lower half of Station Road for the morning with a whole range of produce on offer from plants to homemade wine and jams.
It is estimated the market attracted around 4,000 people.
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John and Sylvia Gray have had their fair share of empty nights at their restaurant in Highcliffe since they opened four years ago. But thanks to a rave review from the Sunday Times outspoken critic Michael Winner takings at Fredericks in Lymington have doubled as punters have flocked there to sample the “real old fashioned personal cooking” that he enthused about.
The critic took them totally by surprise when he strode into their restaurant and told them it was their lucky night. “I treated him just like I would anyone else, “said John, but he had to admit that Mr Winner pointed out that the candle on the table was not lit he heard himself mutter “That’s nerves, that is.”
In his column Winner’s Dinners, the critic described his meal saying the “roes on toast were excellent. Vanessa’s melon and grape cocktail was very good. The vegetarian meal was superb and really all was excellent.”
He added: “The Bakewell tart and mince pies are totally historic.”
John and Sylvia said they had feared a bad review would have disastrous consequences but since it came out, they have hardly had an empty night and people have flocked from all over the Forest to try their menu. She joked: “They are a lot wealthier; they have gold cards.”
