Some artists model in clay, others in wax and some even use concrete, but Mr Alan Wise, of Devereux Drive, Watford, works in a different medium. He uses cooking fat.

Mr Wise, 28, is a pastry cook at the Chef Restaurant, Watford. He started his unusual hobby only about a month ago. To date he has made two heads, one of his father and the other of Ena Sharples, of “Coronation Street” fame.

Both were modelled from memory out of 28lb blocks of ordinary white cooking fat using no special implement other than a nail file.

[From the Watford Observer of March 16, 1962]

 

After a fruitless half-hour search in the ladies’ room at Bailey’s Watford nightclub for a lost contact lens, 21-year-old Lynne Brice came to the conclusion it must have dropped into a wash basin and then down the waste pipe.

Staff at the club who had helped her search promised to investigate the following day but Lynne, whose home is in Glencoe Road, Bushey, left the premises convinced that was the last she would hear of the matter.

However, two days later she was astonished and overjoyed to receive a telephone call from Bailey’s informing her that her £20 lens had been found.

Her mother said this week: “Lynne could scarcely believe the club had gone to so much trouble to keep their promise. Apparently they had called in a plumber who had quite a job dismantling the basin but found the lens in the waste pipe trap.”

[From the Watford Observer of March 18, 1977]

 

The Watford mother, who telephoned the town hall to say her three-year-old daughter had fallen down a manhole with a broken cover and was told to “write a letter about it”, has sent in a protest.

Her daughter wandered off a few yards with her brothers while their parents were washing the car outside their house on Sunday afternoon. She went down an alley between some of the houses – and vanished. The two boys came running down the road crying, and one said his sister had fallen down a hole.

“We could hear her screaming,” said the mother. “My husband lifted the lid and she was standing in the water in the manhole. It was about a four feet drop and to get her out, my husband had to lie flat on the ground and grab her by the collar.”

The girl was so frightened next day she refused to walk in the road when her mother took the oldest boy to school. “I had to carry her,” she said.

[From the Watford Observer of March 19, 1971]

 

A glossy Rolls Royce pulled up in Uxbridge Road, Rickmansworth, on Saturday afternoon and the driver beckoned a policeman. “Which way to the Aquadrome?” he asked.

“Park your car across there in Ebury Road and cross the bridge in the recreation ground,” replied the policeman.

The car pulled away and the policeman tensed suddenly, then dashed into the Aquadrome. “Royalty coming,” he said.

Shortly afterwards, along came Princess Margaret, Princess Anne and Lord Snowdon, who had been driving.

 The royal interest was in the water ski-ing. The party stayed watching for nearly an hour and Lord Snowdon took pictures.

[From the Watford Observer of March 30, 1962]