GALLOPING HORSES

Driving along the main road at Dawlish early one morning on  December 2, 1971, a motorist was amazed to see horses galloping towards him. He braked hard, and the car behind did the same, but skidded and caused a collision.

The smallholder pleaded guilty to being the owner of three horses which had strayed onto the highway. They were kept in a field off Warren Road. He told the police he had done all he could to secure them. They must have got through a gap in the hedge or someone opening a gate. He was fined £3.

RABID ANIMALS

The extreme difficulties in ensuring that rabid animals are not imported into this country, through small ports is referred to in the annual report of the port medical officer for the Teignmouth Port Health Authority, Dr H M Davies. He regarded it as no way impossible that animals could not be landed from the very many foreign-going ships.

Professor Andrew B Sample, the port medical officer for Liverpool, said that the likelihood of a dog or cat escaping is even greater now than formerly, owing to bow-opening container ships being used for coastwise traffic. If when an offence is committed, the captain responsible for the dog or cat landing from his ship is prosecuted, we would soon find a stricter control of these animals on board ships.

HARBOUR SCHEME CLASH

There was a clash between Mr Arthur Bladon and Mr Richard Sharman. Mr Bladon accused him of getting emotional about the subject.

‘Although he is sincere, he will go to any lengths to stop the scheme. He is so intensively involved, it is eating into him like a cancer and destroying him. Hardly any one favours the wall going out to sea, but some of us are realists. Unless something is done, ships will not be able to come in.’

Mr Sharman deplored some of Mr Bladon’s remarks. ‘He talks about emotion, and the tears start pouring from his eyes. I am amazed at the complete and utter naivety of you all, with Mr Bladon in the forefront, in taking these vague and woolly minutes as they stand.’ Mr Dick Every said the matter had been shilly-and-shallyed about enough.

IN DAYS OF YORE 

25 years ago. March 7 1947: Madame Fifine, well-known on the operatic stage, consented to take over the position of producer for the Teignmouth Operatic Society.

50 years ago: Congratulatory messages were sent from Teignmouth and Bishopsteignton on the occasion of the wedding of Princess Mary and Viscount Lascelles.

‘ROMANOFF AND JULIET’ AT THE CARLTON

She the daughter of an executive turned diplomat, he second in command of a warship, both unhappily encumbered with the rigid social and political stances of the parents, and just as well, for she is American and he Russian.

WISE WORDS

The mind is ever ingenious in making its own distress. Endure what is hard, in order to bear what is easy. To seem, and not to be, is throwing the shuttle without weaving. ‘Applause is the echo of a platitude’,  Ambrose Bierce

RIVIERA CINEMA

Shelly Winters in Bloody Mama; A Bullet For Pretty Boy; Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls; Mae West in Myra  Breckinridge.