A drama which turned out to be a comedy came to the Redding Avenue, Bushey, home of a Mr John Geoter on Tuesday, when members of the police force, the fire brigade and a bomb disposal unit went to investigate a hole he had dug in his back garden.

As Mr Geoter dug the hole, his spade struck something hard. An unexploded bomb, he thought, and called the police.

A lone police constable took measurements. The hole was 3ft in diameter and 7ft 6in deep. Muddy water, to an approximate depth of 3ft, obscured the object from view.

The Eastern Command Bomb Disposal Squad was sent for. The fire brigade provided a small portable pump and the water was pumped away. As the water vanished, it revealed... a block of limestone!

[From the Watford Observer of February 5, 1965]

 

Mr John Melville, of the Palace Theatre, was treated at the Peace Memorial Hospital, on Saturday, after accidentally firing a revolver loaded with blanks into his hand.

The play, Murder at the Vicarage, called for a shot off-stage. Mr Melville loaded a pistol and, about two minutes before the cue for the shot, thumbed the hammer of the weapon slowly backwards.

His thumb slipped, the hammer struck the blank, and a mixture of hot gas and wadding made a hole in Mr Melville’s hand. After treatment he returned to work with his arm in a sling.

The audience knew nothing of the incident apart from the premature detonation.

[From the Watford Observer of February 9, 1951]

 

Until recently, Mr Llewellyn Davies used to meet his wife from work.

At six o’clock during most of the week and at eight o’clock on Fridays, he drove her home from the North Watford Waitrose, where she is a section manager.

On most evenings, Mrs Davies carried a heavy holdall bag. “But somebody must have watched me,” she says, “because last Friday we were followed home.”

As their car drew into the garage yard behind their flat in Orbital Crescent, Watford, two men opened the car door and grabbed the bag. In the scuffle that followed, Mr Davies was hit in the face. The two attackers then ran to their car, where two more men were waiting, and drove off.

But the disappointment of these modern brigands must have been immense. The reason? The bag did not contain the week’s takings from the supermarket, but Mrs Davies’ shopping, worth about £1. It was all recovered the next morning.

[From the Watford Observer of February 16, 1962]

 

Bleak, desolate and horrible is how Watford’s Charter Place shopping centre is described by a radical new magazine out this week.

The article is published in a magazine called Metropolis. It is written by an Oxhey man who goes under the name of Theodore Gremlin.

Along with the written word comes a selection of photographs of Charter Place.

One is of the entrance, near the Timothy Whites store. “It looks like something out of Berlin,” says the author.

The article concludes Watford planners have messed things up. Mr Gremlin’s solution is a drastic one. “Blow it up,” he says.

[From the Watford Observer of February 18, 1983]