► TOWN FLOODED

Following two inches of torrential rain throughout the early hours of Saturday morning, there was severe flooding in Teignmouth. This was caused by water sweeping down from the new development at the top of the town, coinciding with a high tide, which did not allow the water to escape. This ‘phenomenal occurrence’ was created by an acute depression. Mr Albert Whitlock of the Urban Council had warned 12 months ago  that laying a 12-inch main down Rocky Lane would send too much water down the Brook.

The worst affected areas in the town centre were in Lower Bitton, where the main road was three or four feet under a mixture of mud and water. All the houses and shops had a gooey substance flowing from back to front. A pet rabbit had been drowned and fish in a garden pool were lost.

► CARLTON THEATRE ‘LOSS’

‘Let us not become too emotional over fantastic figures produced by arithmetical acrobatics,’ appealed Mr Ronald Doel at the Urban Council last week. The theatre has cost the ratepayers £55,000 in the last six years, including £17,000 on the summer show, with predictable press headlines. Of the total, more than half, £28,476, was for interest and instalments of principal on the loan raised to construct the premises in 1967, similar in nature to the mortgage most of them had on their houses – in other words, the creation of an asset, not a “loss”.’

► CHRISTMAS LIGHTING

Last week, the Urban Council decided to light its own trees, saving the ratepayers over £100. A quotation from South Western Electricity Board to light the three big trees totalled £356. The Council asked Newton Abbot if it could borrow its hydraulic tower. It will provide a driver and electrician at £5 per hour, to carry out the job at half the SWEB price. Mr Arthur Bladon said it was a warning to the Board to come down out of the clouds.

► SHOCK FOR DOGS

Two dogs received electric shocks on Friday from temporary scaffolding  outside the Midland Bank in Dawlish. SWEB men found that electric cables were touching the scaffolding, making it live.

► THREW A BOMB

A former Devon and Cornwall Police radio operator was gaoled for 18 months by Exeter Crown Court last week for throwing a home-made petrol bomb through a bar window of a Exmouth hotel, owned by the husband of the woman with whom he had been having an affair, after she had terminated it. None of the guests was  hurt.

The defence submitted that he needed help, and handed the Judge a letter from a consultant psychiatrist, which stated that there was a hospital bed available for him.

► A  PRECIOUS BOOK OF POEMS

One of the most historically valuable books of West Country poetry, ‘Vagabond Verses’, has been found by Mr W J Heard, the antiques dealer of George Street, among his collection old books.

Vagabond Verses by Autolycus, published nearly 70 years ago in 1904, were written by a porter at Teignmouth Railway Station, Thomas Henry Aggett. He became known as the Railway Poet of the West, and achieved fame and support in the Teignmouth area for his poetic writings.

► RIVIERA CINEMA

Telly Savalas in The Heroin Gang; James Coburn in The Carey Treatment; Charlton Heston in Skyjacked; George Kennedy in False Witness; Ice Station Zebra”, with Rock Hudson, Ernest Borgnine and Patrick McGoohan.