Urgent Request: Please could you help me? A relative who is a vegetarian is coming to pay us a visit and the only dish I seem to be able to think of is macaroni cheese. Do please suggest something else.

Mrs Noel Chanter replies: How about a vegetable pie? Collect as many different kinds of vegetables as you can: one or two carrots, parsnips and onions, two tomatoes, half a small cauliflower, some tinned peas etc.

Cut them into neat pieces and stew the hard vegetables for 15 minutes in two tablespoonfuls of salad oil and ½ a gill of water. Also, soak a dessertspoonful of tapioca in a ½ gill of water. Now mix all the vegetables together in a pie dish, add one or two sliced hard-boiled eggs, the soaked tapioca and a little marmite. Cover with a lid of your best pastry and bake until brown and crisp.

[From the Watford Observer of April 2, 1937]

 

Sir Stanley Rous, secretary of the Football Association, put his head in the lion’s mouth on Friday. He looked in on “the other game” to join with the Old Fullerians Rugby Club at their annual dinner at Cawdells Restaurant.

But for Sir Stanley this was like old times, for he is a vice president of the Old Fullerians’ club and one of its co-founders.

And he confessed cheerfully that he was partly responsible for the change-over from soccer to rugby at Watford Grammar School. When the matter was talked over in an interview with the new headmaster, he said, he readily agreed to the change. “You see, I didn’t think there were any boys clever enough to play soccer,” he added, amid laughter.

[From the Watford Observer of April 1, 1960]

 

After five days’ freedom, Jacko and Jinny, the pet monkeys belonging to Mr Alfred William Rogers, of Merry Hill Road, Bushey, were recaptured on Friday evening by Mr H Slater of the RSPCA.

After vainly using nets and traps, Mr Slater decided to dope the animals by inserting small tablets into bananas. They ate the fruit and went to sleep.

Mr Slater caught one as it fell from a tree in School Lane, while the other, having fallen from a house in Merryhill Mount, was carried back to its owner by the occupants.

[From the Watford Observer of April 21, 1939]

 

Campaigners trying to ban the sale of lethal Kung Fu death stars to children are determined to fight on despite a rebuff by the Home Office.

The Home Office has said there are no reasons to extend legislation to cover the sale of the martial arts weapons in high street stores. The statement has come as a disappointment to county council trading standards officers.

The sale of the death stars and other weapons was exposed by the Watford Observer when worried parents complained their children had been sold them at a sports shop in Market Street, Watford.

“This Home Office reply is obviously a disappointment. We are looking for control to make sure these weapons do not get into the hands of impressionable youngsters. They may have a legitimate use on martial arts clubs but their sale is of great concern,” said Hertfordshire’s deputy trading standards officer Mr Brian McNally.

[From the Watford Observer of April 19, 1985]

 

These stories conclude the Nostalgia column first published in the Watford Observer on April 18, 2014. The next Nostalgia column can be found in this week’s Watford Observer (dated April 25, 2014 and available in newsagents now, priced just 90p) or read online here from 4pm on Thursday.

If you can't wait until then, don't forget: Every morning at 5am a new Nostalgia story from the day in question appears on this website.

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