CONFESSIONS AND COVER-UPS WERE ALL PART OF DAILY LIFE FOR THIS TAXI DRIVER!

One way or another, the life of a taxi driver has been portrayed in books and films as anything but boring.

One man who would have agreed with that assessment, albeit not in the manner suggested by those spicy “Confessions” films of the 1970s, was Falmouth driver Richard Gale, who ferried my dear Mum around town with much care and kindness in her final years.

 

A little reluctantly, as he returned Mum from one of those trips in 1988, he agreed to my request for a Falmouth Packet interview about his work.

 

And it quickly became apparent that it did indeed involve a great deal more than just transporting people around from A to B.

 

In a single day, as I subsequently wrote, Richard could well find himself performing the work of father confessor, diplomat, tourist officer and under-cover agent, to say nothing of the very long and unpredictable hours.

 

“We get people pouring out their troubles to us as we drive along,” he told me. “We hear everything, right across the spectrum.

 

“With the youngsters, it’s trouble with their boyfriends and girlfriends; with the older people, it’s marital problems.  It’s very touching on occasions.

 

“I think it does help if they can talk things over, even if – or perhaps because - it’s with a perfect stranger. We don’t ask them about their problems; they just come flooding out.”

 

Richard was at pains to point out the acknowledged code of practice among the taxi drivers that ensured such “confessions” remained utterly confidential. 

 

Likewise some of the arrangements he unwittingly found himself party to concerning the clandestine movements of some of his customers.

 

“There are occasions where, if a husband or wife came on the scene and started asking me questions, I would simply have to deny all knowledge of certain trips and people,” he admitted.

 

As for police matters, though, there was only one stance: “We are obliged to pass on any information they may be seeking and this we do; we are constantly picking up people wanted by the police for some reason or other.”

 

On the other hand, there would almost certainly have been times when customers would have been diplomatically prevented from attracting police attention.

 

As Richard explained: “Obviously there can be problems through drink when you are picking up people from clubs in the early hours of the morning – although they are usually most apologetic the next day.

 

“If someone starts spouting on about something – politics or whatever – I agree with them rather than cause offence.”

 

Talking of confidences and cover-ups, I am reminded of the “father confessor” role played – during a murder trial, no less - by Penryn community constable and former mayor Len Brokenshire.

 

When I interviewed him on the occasion of his retirement in 1987, he recalled how, during a period of leave, he found a stream of Penryn folk heading for his house.

 

Having been formally interviewed in their own homes in the presence of their spouses, Len’s visitors disclosed that they had not been entirely honest about their whereabouts at certain times.

 

So now they confided in Len where they had really been and asked him to “put the matter straight, please.”

 

Len subsequently volunteered to break into his leave and come on official duty, but his boss said: “I think you’d better stay right there; you’re doing a better job!”

WHEN IT WAS NOT ALL RIGHT FOR ALL-WHITE FALMOUTH

I’ve told this tale once or twice before, here and there, but with today’s snowy weather and Easter Monday almost upon us, I can’t resist giving it a fresh airing.  (After all, if the BBC can get away with so many repeats . . . )

I’m recalling the 1967 Cornwall Senior Cup Final at St Austell when Falmouth Town lost 4-1 to then arch local rivals Truro City.

 

As excuses go, the following is a pretty good ‘un.   

 

The Falmouth camp obviously hadn’t paid attention to the weather forecast . . . . or maybe the forecasters had simply got it badly wrong.  (NO???) 

 

Whatever, for a goodly part of the match – from quite early on, I think – the dominant feature was a raging snowstorm that swept in from the east (beast?) and made the scene a near total white-out.

 

Truro were playing in their normal red and black – quite appropriate to stand out against the white – but Falmouth, wait for it, had chosen in their wisdom to play in a change strip of . . . ALL WHITE!!  No wonder more than a few passes went astray!

 

The date of that final, incidentally, was March 27. That was yesterday’s date, too, when Devon became a wintry wonderland and the white stuff also crept into Cornwall.  

 

So, together with that Beast From The East that hit us on March 18, 2018, it can be seen that Cornish snow-lovers should never give up hope too soon! 

'BEST PLACE’ FALMOUTH – WHERE REALITY CAN EVEN EXCEED EXPECTATION!

Nice to see a little sanity returning to Medialand with Falmouth now having been chosen as one of the top eight in the annual Sunday Times Best Places To Live guide.

 

It was a welcome record-straightener after the absurd “most depressing town” verdict that did the national rounds a few weeks earlier.

 

It’s not exactly up for debate, after all, is it? Those of us lucky enough to live in the place don’t let a day go by without counting our blessings.

 

And writers have been singing its praises since the year dot.  Well, at least as far back as 1891, when the Guide To Falmouth, by R N Worth, was published and included the following:--

 

The praises of Falmouth were well remarked by (an unnamed) writer in Blackwood, who had visited the port whilst on a yachting excursion:--

 

“We had often heard people talk about Falmouth, but neither they nor the geography books prepared us for the sight which met us, as we rounded the lighthouse headland, of a large fleet of merchantmen lying at anchor in the spacious harbour. We counted upwards of 50 large sail, besides several steamers . . . 

 

“ . . . For people with young children at the spade-and-bucket age, Falmouth is surely the very one to suit.  

 

“There never was such a beach for shells – they are literally in myriads. The beach is made up of them. There are miles of rocks, too, where the receding tide leaves endless successions of crystal ponds full of seaweed and prawns, and green crabs, and anemones, and other delightful objects.

 

“Then for older folk there is the ever-present beauty of the broken coastline, and walking around Pendennis Castle, on the projecting point which forms one side of the harbour, and makes an admirable lounge for indifferent walkers, you come upon the harbour and all the shipping.

 

“A day at Falmouth must be worth a month at Brighton.”  

WHEN THERE WAS NO END IN SIGHT FOR THE MAN WITH THE MONEY*

(But Why Not Just Settle For A £5 Million Cheque Every Year?)

 

Among the many epiphets that Peter de Savary attracted during his hyperactive few years in Cornwall in the 1980s and early ‘90s, “cat among the pigeons” and the like were high up on the list.  

 

As an incoming investor and developer, he undoubtedly had the vision, passion, drive and wherewithal to Get Things Done – something that had become an almost alien concept in the previously “sleepy” duchy.

 

Not only was he the “colourful” tycoon, as the media dubbed him, he was also controversial.  By no means all of his multi-million pound projects found universal favour.

 

And their usually high profile also sparked debate on broader issues – such as the nature of (vast) wealth and of those who acquire it.

 

I found two cases in point in a single page of the Falmouth Packet in March, 1988.

 

The first – long before the Eden Project was even thought of – concerned Land’s End, which was then Cornwall’s most visited attraction and had been acquired by Mr de Savary a few months earlier.

 

The report was almost certainly the word-for-word reproduction of a press release whose style bore a remarkable resemblance to one with which I was intimately familiar.

 

The landmark site was being “dramatically transformed” (see what I mean about controversy?) in double-quick time by an army of Cornish workers hailed as “the best of British,” the piece gushed.

 

Despite some of Cornwall’s worst-ever weather lashing its most exposed location, the new-look Land’s End would be 75 per cent ready by Easter.

 

This “remarkable achievement” was attributed to the great majority of the 120 builders having worked from 8 am to 7.30 pm seven days a week since arriving on the site just before Christmas.

 

The report went on to list all the new features that were being created both within and outside the main complex.

 

The developments also inspired a novel thinkpiece – “One Man’s View” - on that same Packet page from James Lowry.  He wrote:--

 

Running my eye over the list of Britain’s 200 richest people – and noting from my latest bank statement that, alas, I am still a few quid short of joining such colourful company – I got to thinking about the nature of wealth and those who acquire it.

 

If you, like Peter de Savary, had £57 million behind you, would you continue flying around the world in search of acquisitions? And if so, why?

 

Speaking for myself, I would allow someone like National Provincial or Halifax to take charge of my money and look forward to an annual interest cheque which, at around eight and a half per cent, would net me a little under £5 million a year. 

 

On that sum I feel I could squeeze by quite nicely. And I wouldn’t have all the bother of worrying about recalcitrant employees or troublesome business rivals.

 

Such natural indolence as I possess does not, however, accumulate fortunes. Had Mr de Savary been the sort to deposit his early earnings in a building society and then sit down to watch the world go by, he would not possess £57 million.

 

So it seems those who have money have no time to spend it.  And those who, like me, are prepared to make time to spend it don’t have the wherewithal to acquire it. There is something fundamentally unjust about life, isn’t there.

 

By way of consolation, I am happy to note that Mr de Savary’s presence in Falmouth is at least increasing the value of my own modest assets.  House prices in the town have risen by around 25 per cent over the last year – and they’re still moving ever upwards.

 

This point was underlined when I was chatting to a fellow who bought a ground floor flat with garden in Woodlane in 1983 for £39,500 – and has just had it valued at £70,000!

 

This same fellow told me of a property speculator who systematically makes his money by following Mr de Savary around the world, buying up property wherever the tycoon invests, and pulling in fat profits once prices zoom.

 

The speculator is in Falmouth doing just that at this very moment. So it seems all those who have invested something in Falmouth’s future stand to collect at least a few crumbs from a rich man’s table. 

 

* That’s how I heard him describe himself, more than once – “I am The Man With The Money” – when introducing himself to various interested parties in the early stages of a project.      

  

COULD THE GULF STREAM REALLY HAVE BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR FALMOUTH’S ‘FALLEN WOMEN AND GIRLS?’

I wrote last month (Feb 10) about the scale and public identification of prostitution in Falmouth in the Victorian era.  

 

I’m now reminded that the topic was still coming up for public discussion, if no longer with its practitioners so openly identified, by the time of the First World War (1914-18). 

 

With the vast influx of soldiers, Royal Naval and Merchant Navy personnel, “prostitution, never unknown in a port, was a cause for concern.”

 

So wrote John Pollock, in his book, FALMOUTH FOR INSTRUCTIONS – The Story Of Falmouth In The Great War.

 

A public meeting in Falmouth – year unspecified – resolved to employ a “trained worker in connection with preventative and rescue work among actual or potential fallen woman and girls” at a cost of £100 a year.

 

And at another public meeting, the Falmouth Social Welfare Association, formerly the Female Rescue Society, was addressed by a Miss Hudson, who reportedly said: “It would be misleading for me even to imply that we have in Falmouth none of the colossal evils found in other places.  

 

“If you take the hand-to-mouth people of Falmouth with a number of the hand-to-mouth population of the east of London, you would find as much depravity, immorality, degradation and squalor in their town as would be found in the city.”

 

Somewhat bizarrely, as John Pollock noted, Miss Hudson said there was a feeling that this was due to “climatic reasons;” she had heard “a very great deal of the cause put down to the Gulf Stream.”

 

John added: “She seemed on somewhat stronger ground when she said that it might be due to the fact that Falmouth was a port and a railway terminus, together with poor and insanitary housing.

 

“With regard to the streets of Falmouth, all she had seen were a few giddy, loud girls making themselves cheap, but, watch as carefully as she could, she did not see the professional element about.”

 

But Miss Hudson also ventured to suggest that, with Falmouth being a port in which so many nationalities mingled, “certain conduct is carried on under the surface, hidden under the cloak of so-called respectability, by married and single women and girls.

 

“It crops up in most unlooked-for quarters, and is carried on under the guise of friendship, friendly calls, and some people condone it and connive at it.”

 

What were needed, declared Miss Hudson, were “clean-souled, public-spirited men and women of the town insisting on one moral standard, and a centre house where the fallen women can be looked after, medically and morally.” 

WORKING TOGETHER . . . FOR AN ARTIFICIAL FUTURE?

One old-school former editor of mine, John Marquis, when prophesying doom and gloom, will occasionally end a blog post with “So glad I’ll be out of it by such-and-such a year.”

Another, Ken Thompson, now no longer with us in earthly form, might well conclude “So glad I AM out of it.”

 

I have in mind the gradual takeover over of us humans by artificial intelligence (AI)  and in particular its insidious intrusion into what passes for journalism these days.

 

I recently read a story in a weekly newspaper that struck me as rather odd.  Even by modern standards, it came across as a piece of quite exceptionally sloppy reporting and poor writing, so much so that I felt compelled to show it to a fellow retired journo.

 

He dusted down his investigative hat, did a little bit of research and discovered that the person by-lined on the offending piece was, wait for it, an “AI-assisted reporter.”

 

Additionally, so he read: “Some of (name’s) articles are being drafted with the assistance of AI tools such as Chat GPT.  However, a journalist or editor always decides what content to cover and always reviews this content before it is published.”

 

Talk about intriguing.  The image sprang to mind of a reporter bashing out his story with a robot sat beside him, but of course that wouldn’t be the case. (I guess?!) 

 

Seriously, I’d love to know just how the two intelligences – real and artificial – work together.

 

Or perhaps I wouldn’t. After all, you know what we always used to be told: “You can’t believe what you read in the newspapers.”  And especially so, one might add now, if you suspect there is something “artificial” (fake?) about it!

THE CHAOTIC CASE OF THE SLOW-MOVING PROPELLER

This photo appeared in the Daily Telegraph a few days ago recording the start of an 18-hour, 79-mile journey for what was thought to be the heaviest load ever to go on Britain’s roads.

 

 The 600-tonne monster truck and trailer was transporting an electrical component from Tilbury to Millbrook Power Station in Bedfordshire.  

 

Can’t imagine this on Cornwall’s roads somehow, can you, especially if Satnav was taking it down some of our lanes.

 

However . . . there was an epic, slow-moving, heavy-load journey down to Falmouth that attracted much press coverage back in the early 1960s.

 

I told the tale in Reflections*, a collection of my Falmouth Packet columns of the same name, accompanied by original Brian Thomas cartoons and published in 2014.

 

Here they are, the column and its cartoons (three pages-worth):--

 

By way of a change, I bring you today The Chaotic Case Of The Slow-Moving Propeller, as featured in the Packet and the national press 50 years ago. 

 

In those dim, distant days, there was much less motorway across England and precious little dual carriageway in Devon and Cornwall.  That spelt trouble for the delivery by road of a 35-ton propeller from Birkenhead to Falmouth Docks. 

 

The journey took 16 days – twice as long as planned – and caused a big delay in work on the BP tanker British Lantern.

 

Attracting wrath and publicity all along the way, the snail-pace transporter was hauled along by “the drivers and crews” of two tractors.

 

“It went relatively smoothly until Devon,” said Dennis Proffit, one of the drivers, “but oh, those narrow, hilly Devon roads.”

 

By Exeter, with holiday traffic building up, an extra heavy traction vehicle was hired.  In Truro, the propeller was hauled up Lemon Street – yes, Lemon Street - “at no more than walking pace.” 

 

Exactly why it had to come by road, with long spells in lay-bys, was a mystery.  The Birkenhead firm responsible refused to comment, and Falmouth Docks had “absolutely no control” over its dispatch.

 

Mr  R J Veal, of Coast Lines Ltd (remember them, with their coasters coming up Penryn River?), said they could easily have transported it by sea, in just three days.

 

There would have been no need for the additional costs in terms of police escorts, long delays for motorists and goods vehicles, the unexpected hire of another vehicle, and “damage caused en route.”

 

And the Packet gave the last word to Mr Proffit: “Just let my wife suggest coming to Cornwall for a holiday after this lot!”

 

 * I am reproducing extracts from Reflections – the columns and cartoons – on an occasional basis throughout this year to mark the 10^th anniversary of my retirement and the start of my fund-raising for Cancer Research UK. To date, I have donated around £25,000 to the charity from the sale of my books and, latterly, my paintings.

 

For previous extracts from Reflections, see blog dated December 30, January 12 and 26, February 27.

  

ART SPOT

One of the two acrylic paintings that have kept me busy at my easel in recent weeks, and something a little different, i.e. not Cornish or even British! It’s from a photo by Ali Castle and shows a stretch of the Gartempe River that flows through the Nouvelle-Aquitaine and Centre-Val de Loire regions of France.  Teacher: Jeanni Grant-Nelson 

BICKLAND: “THE WEMBLEY OF THE WEST?”

Much talk of late about a new “Wembley Of The North” stadium for Manchester United, but how about reviving that vision from way back when of Bickland Park as “the Wembley of the West??”

It’s not just their outstanding run in the FA Vase competition that has won so much praise for Falmouth Town this season.

 

For any fans returning to the fold after a long-ish absence, the club’s Bickland Park ground itself has been a revelation.  It’s had nothing short of a massive facelift, both in overall appearance and in all-round maintenance and development.

 

Admittedly, it would be a bit of a stretch, but I’m half-expecting the resurrection of a one-time popular description of a future Bickland as “the Wembley of the West.”

 

That was the vision of the club’s figurehead half a century ago, when, with the aid of more than a few new brooms, Town were embarking on a record-breaking decade of success.

 

For local businessman Warren Newell, who became chairman in 1969, it was the chance to demonstrate his status as a born optimist.

 

Three years into his chairmanship, I interviewed him at length – and listened to his blueprint for the club’s future.

 

Here’s what he saw in his crystal ball:--

 

   Relegation of the grandstand to no more than subsidiary accommodation, with the dressing rooms and corridor space expanded into new social club premises. (The latter, then, were still in Arwenack Avenue.)

 

   New dressing rooms to be built on the opposite side, on land that was “currently a purposeless valley behind the standing accommodation, but nevertheless owned by the club.”

 

   On top of the new dressing rooms, there would be a new grandstand “bigger than anything Cornwall has ever seen.” In between, a tunnel would provide the way onto and off the field for the players and officials “in true League club style.”

 

   Indoor training facilities would add the finishing touch to a revitalised ground that was “already considered the best in the west.”

 

At the time, Town were still in the South Western League, but Mr Newell saw Town as top of a seven-counties regional league ten years on.

 

Some, of course, regarded this as all a pipe dream, to which he countered: “Ten years ago – before we had even entered the FA Cup, remember (think Oxford United – MT) – I don’t suppose many would have prophesied the success that was to come. Yet look what the club has done in that time.”

 

And he supported his vision with hard reason: “I think they will regionalise football. As the years, roll by, people, with more leisure hours, will be able to travel further than we can now.”

 

Sadly, Mr Newell died in 1973 and so never saw the club make its original entry into the Western League, in 1974.

 

Now the club is back in that league once more, and in with a realistic chance of even higher things come the end of this season - something even the great Town teams of old never achieved, league-wise.

 

A few miles up the road, of course, one-time deadly rivals Truro City did precisely that in the early 2000s. Under the ownership of property developer Kevin Heaney,  they followed in Town’s footsteps into the Western League and then climbed much higher again.

 

In 2008 Truro were in the Western League premier division and their average home attendance had quickly risen to around 400.

 

Heaney, admittedly with tongue in cheek, I suspect, told me: “I hope this club maintains its momentum.  Hopefully, if we see a 60% increase year on year, we will be getting over 20,000 in the Premier League by 2016!”

 

Alas, most of the Truro home attendances, despite promotions into the Southern and then Conference league, remained stubbornly around the 400 to 500 mark.

 

But dreams have their uses.  As the legendary Sir Matt Busby once said: “Aim for the sky and you can reach the ceiling; aim for the ceiling and you’ll never get off the ground!”

TUKE AND HIS NUDES: THE UPROAR THAT “MADE THE PACKET’S WINDOWS RATTLE”

Henry Scott Tuke was without doubt one of the most accomplished and admired artists ever to be associated with Cornwall.

 

He lived in Falmouth for 45 years until his death in 1929. Although a noted maritime artist, he became best known for his paintings of nude boys and young men, modelling on his boat and local beaches.

 

A book about his life published by Gay Men’s News in 1988 majored on this aspect of his work. It caused quite a stir when it was controversially reviewed in the Falmouth Packet, with the ensuing debate ultimately being “settled” from an unlikely quarter.

 

A few weeks after its review, the Packet reported that it had led to “ripples of indignation far and wide.”

 

The paper’s Pendennis columnist wrote: “Our review dared to speculate on the possibility that Tuke was motivated in his work by more than a purely artistic obsession.

 

“Bachelor Tuke . . . hired local lads as models in his floating studio, a brigantine moored off Greenbank.

 

“He was an excellent artist who was elected to the Royal Academy, but his recurrent theme – nude youths in seaside settings – did make people wonder about him at the time. The fact that Oscar Wilde was a pal of his didn’t help matters, either.”

 

The Packet’s review mentioned this speculation without offering any firm conclusions but, as Pendennis put it: “The din of indignant Tuke supporters made our windows rattle.”

 

Among the review’s readers was Mrs Owen Thurston, an elderly woman in Somerset, who jumped to Tuke’s defence in a manner that brooked no argument.

 

“Tuke was in love with my mother,” she wrote in a letter to the editor, “and only settled for bachelorhood after she spurned his entreaties and married my father. So any suggestion that he was homosexual is nonsense!” 

FALMOUTH IN THE ’80s

                                                Show Over For Showtime?

 

Members of the long-running Falmouth Showtime Company were furious at an “insulting” letter informing them that they had been dropped from the programme of entertainment at the Princess Pavilion for the 1988 summer season. The group, which staged variety shows once a week for holiday visitors, had celebrated its 21^st birthday in the previous year. Now they were desperately hoping that they would not be forced to disband and were searching for other venues for their performances.

 

In a letter to producer and choreographer Veronica Spear, Councillor John Longhurst, chairman of Carrick District Council’s amenities committee, said: “You will recall that the previous chairman of the committee addressed officers of your company last year and suggested that various changes should take place within the company in order that a more professional show could be presented. Unfortunately, it appeared that little heed was taken of that advice until late in the season.”

 

The company was upset at the tone of the letter and Bernard Smales, Showtime president and a former Mayor of Falmouth, criticised Councillor Longhurst’s letter as “denigrating, derisory and indeed insulting.” He added: “They all put in such a lot of hard work and over the years we have taken youngsters under our wing. It gives them something to do throughout the winter, an interest in the summer, and they are not roaming the streets. It is the nasty way it has been done.” Councillor Longhurst commented: “There was no intention to be insulting and I don’t think there was anything in the letter that was insulting.”

 

Setbacks Galore, But Ivor’s Show Had To Go On

 

If ever Falmouth producer Ivor Bray needed to use the well-worn declaration “the show must go on,” it must have been for his production of Starburst at the Princess Pavilion in the summer of 1982. First, he and his cast of 40 from Redruth Variety Club were without a pianist until just four weeks before the show. Then a new star dancer had to be found when the first one became pregnant.  

 

But the biggest catastrophe hit them in the previous November, when a misguided firework on Guy Fawkes Night homed in on the club’s rehearsal room in Redruth, burning it down.  The club had to make do with several different halls in the area. “There have been a lot of setbacks,” said Ivor.  “It’s the most I have ever had.”

 

 

De Savary Family Survive Plane Crash

 

Falmouth-based hyperactive tycoon Peter de Savary, who was investing heavily in various projects across Cornwall, was rescued from “almost certain death” when he and his family were involved in a plane crash on the French Caribbean island of St Bartholomew in December, 1987. The plane ended up on a reef after engine failure on the approach to land. The pilot, who was found dead, tried to regain height, but a wing dipped and touched the sea, causing the plane to crash.

 

Witnesses piled into every available boat and sped to the sinking wreckage 300 yards out from the beach. The survivors were pulled to safety from the cabin, where the water was still rising. The de Savary family and their nanny were all taken to hospital, but remarkably they only suffered scratches and bruises. They were kept in overnight before being discharged.

 

PdS, as he was known, his wife Lana and their children, Lisa, 18, Nicola, 15, and Tara, nine months, and their nanny were on their way to spend Christmas on the paradise island of Antigua, about 100 miles south of the accident.  Local police praised the quick thinking of people on the beach, saying that if they had not acted so fast there would certainly have been other deaths. The rescuers had cut the party free with great skill.  

 

Twenty Dead On Scillies Flight

 

On Saturday, July 16, 1983, a British Airways Sikorsky S-61 helicopter plunged into the sea on its approach to St Mary’s, Isles of Scilly, from Penzance, killing 20 of the 26 people on board in what was then Britain’s worst helicopter civil aviation tragedy.  Four days later, the focus of attention turned to Falmouth with the arrival at the Docks of the wrecked aircraft.  It was brought alongside the Duchy Wharf on the deck of the diving support ship Seaforth Clansman. It was lifted onto a Royal Navy low-loader for transporting to the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough. The Seaforth Clansman went to the crash area from Falmouth to raise the wreckage from the seabed 200 feet below the surface. Royal Navy personnel involved in the operation were Neil Primrose, of Falmokuth, and Gareth Callister, of Penryn. 

 

Case of the Flying Tractor

 

A Falmouth family had a lucky escape when their house was hit by a flying tractor.  That’s right – no exaggeration! The airborne vehicle smashed into an isolated two-storey house above the cliffs at Pennance Point near Swanpool.  It had careered down the steep hillside from Falmouth Golf Club and taken off when it broke through a hedge bordering the public footpath. Just before 7 am on June 29, 1983,  Jim and Judie Bellamy were having a cup of tea and their sons, aged 16, 15 and 12, were still in bed when the runaway tractor struck their property. The couple rushed outside to find the unmanned culprit stuck between a toilet and their garage with its engine roaring. The tractor had torn a hole in their fence and had “flown” into the rear of the Bellamies’ premises. It had cleared thick undergrowth and a tank of diesel and come to rest with a loud bang only feet away from the bedrooms where the boys were sleeping. “It’s a miracle,” said Judie, a communications teacher at Falmouth Technical College. “I’m only glad it landed there and not a few feet the other way. Her husband eventually managed to switch off the engine and two groundsmen from the golf course came running down to the scene.  “They were very, very concerned,” said Judie. “It must have been very frightening for them because they were on the golf course and suddenly saw from above what was happening.” 

 

Best Keeps Cornish Date Despite Beer Mug Attack

 

Arguably the biggest-ever sporting name to be seen in action in the Falmouth area was George Best, the legendary former Manchester United wing wizard, genuinely one of the greatest footballers of all time. He guested for Penryn Athletic in a prestige friendly match against Falmouth Town on the latter’s Bickland Park ground in 1983 – but there was a late fear that the big event would be cancelled.  Just days beforehand, he was the victim of a beer mug attack in a London pub that resulted in eight stitches in his head. The attack took place late one night, but then Best discharged himself from hospital at 3 am, albeit spending most of the rest of that day in bed.

 

But his agent, Bill McMurdo, pledged: “George is a quick healer at the worst of times and it will take more than a few stitches to keep him out of action.”  He was right.  Two days after the launch of BBC Radio Cornwall, Best took to the field before a crowd of some 2,000 in an atmosphere little short of electric.  Alas, “his” Penryn side were beaten 6-1 by Falmouth, then the best in Cornwall.