Sometimes, when you trawl through the Watford Observer archives, you can pick a month and find practically nothing worth dusting down and reprinting in these pages. I was thus delighted to choose July 1962 recently and discover at least half a dozen items of interest today.

The fun starts with a diary piece from the edition of July 13, 1962.

The diarist quotes one “Hector Hub” from the De Havilland Engine News, as reporting that 100 bricks had “vanished from a pile in a ‘de Hav’ Leavesden assembly shop recently”.

Nothing that unusual there, you may think. A bit of petty pilfering. Been going on since the year dot. True. But this time, there’s a twist. Understandably, the “nuclear chaps” at De Havilland didn’t want to lose any more so they drew up a sign and left it on the remaining bricks. It read: “Danger – radioactive – please handle with gloves!”

The plan was so successful, not only were no more bricks taken, but the thieves even brought back the 100 bricks they’d stolen previously!

Petty pilfering wasn’t confined to bricks, though, of course. In the following week’s paper, we learn of Gerald Kirkham, a 13-year-old who spotted a similarly-aged youth trying car door handles and, rather than report the matter to police, decided to sort the would-be thief out himself.

Gerald, whose dad was a special constable at South Oxhey Police Station, having caught the miscreant red-handed, marched him down to the police station.

I’ll let the paper of July 20, 1962 tell the story:

“It all happened on the evening of May 24 when he [Gerald] was playing on the golf course near his home and saw a boy trying door handles of cars parked in Hayling Road.

“At Watford Juvenile Court on Friday, Gerald was commended for his “public spirited action” by Inspector Kenneth Morris who told the court how the defendant, another 13-year-old boy, from South Oxhey, had been seen by Gerald, who said: “Come with me. I am taking you down to the station.”

“The defendant, who admitted loitering with intent to steal, agreed that he had tried the doors of about six cars.

“In a statement he was alleged to have said: ‘I was going to steal anything left in the cars.’ He was put on probation for two years.

“After the hearing, a police officer told the ‘Observer’: ‘Gerald did a very good piece of work.’

“But Gerald, a pupil at Clarendon School, does not think his ambition to join the police will be realised. ‘I don’t expect I shall be tall enough,’ he said.”

Mind you, it wasn’t only petty thieves trying door handles in those days. Going back to the paper of July 13, 1962, there was much concern about “joyriding” – taking someone else’s car and diving it around for “fun”.

“Unlawfully ‘borrowing’ and driving off someone else’s car or motor cycle is a growing menace which Watford magistrates mean to stamp out,” reported the paper.

“Their chairman Mr. Gordon Ross made this clear on Tuesday in passing sentence, including jail and detention, coupled with driving bans, on eight young men.

“He said the bench was determined to wipe out the increasing number of such offences.

“During the past few days, two cars and a motor cycle have vanished from Central Watford – and that rate is nothing unusual.

“With only half the year gone, over 200 motor vehicles, have been reported stolen in the Watford Police Division, which includes Watford Borough, Abbots Langley, Croxley Green, Rickmansworth and Chorleywood.

“Most of the missing vehicles, presumably having been taken on ‘joy’ rides, are recovered within 24 hours. But at the moment, nearly a score of the vanished vehicles are still unaccounted for, although the police expect some will turn up later.”

Moving from cars to bicycles, and the extrordinary tale of Chipperfield man John Winstone, which appeared in the same paper.

John left home on his bicycle four years previously, unsure of where he wanted to go, except that he wanted to visit India.

Now, four years later, he has returned after a 40,000 mile world tour which took him to 35 countries.

The article reads: “In an itinerary which included Darjeeling, Kashmir and Tahiti, 29-year-old John admits he had plenty of excitement.

“In Lucknow, he spent 20 days in hospital after being bitten by a scorpion. In the Himalayas, on the road to Kathmandu, he had to carry his cycle for three days because the road was so bad.

“After cycling across Europe to Turkey, he went through Iran and Afghanistan to Pakistan. Then came a tour of Ceylon, Burma and Malaya, followed by visits to Vietnam, Japan and Australia.

“Because he took so little cash – £158 – with him, John worked for six months in Pakistan as an electrician and did so again in Perth and Sydney for just over a year.

“Although he speaks no foreign languages, he found the people everywhere ‘most helpful and friendly’. With a notice on his bicycle saying “World Cycle Tour” he was a welcome guest in homes all over the world.

“Asked why he cycled, John said: ‘I like to meet the people and learn their customs when I travel in other countries.’

“Even on the way home from Australia by boat, John could not stop cycling. For every time the ship called at an island, he set off on a cycle tour of the area.

“Back in the south of France, John’s nine-year-old cycle, which had served him so well over the previous four years, ‘gave up’. At Avignon, loaded up with kit and tool boxes, the frame cracked, and he had to finish his tour by train, leaving his cycle in the care of the French Railways ... and he has not seen it since.

“But John does not mind too much. ‘Next time I will probably hitch hike,’ he says.

I don’t know if he was joking – maybe he’s spent the past 53 years whizzing about hither and thither, but there was at least one practical joker in the area at that time. The paper of July 27, 1962, tells of the end-of-term high jinks at Merchant Taylors’ School.

It reads: “Practical jokers were at work at Merchant Taylors’ School, Moor Park, during the weekend.

“When boys arrived at school on Monday morning, they found a yellow plastic pot neatly balanced on top of the 40ft-high flag mast. In one quadrangle a flagstone had been removed and a swinging sign advertising a popular beverage was in its place.

“The authorities found it difficult to remove the sign – and quite impossible to reach the plastic pot.

“In desperation, the fire brigade was called and the receptacle was lowered to safety.”