YESTERDAYS 1973
A NINE-YEAR-OLD boy was released by firemen yesterday after being trapped in a pipe for 90 minutes.
Stephen Harvey, of Maeshyfryd, Cwmbach, Aberdare, got stuck in the pipe on a building site near his home.
His shouts for help were heard by workmen who called the police and they contacted the fire service.
Stephen became trapped at the bottom of the 2ft-wide pipe while he was playing with his friend Paul Jones.
He climbed feet first into the 8ftlong concrete water pipe and with the pipe lying at an angle, when Stephen reached the bottom his legs bent underneath him and he became stuck.
Last night Stephen, one of a family of six, was safely at home with his parents. THOSE responsible for felling and sawing up two sets of goalposts after the controversial secret rugby match between Cardiff College of Education and Natal University students at Port Talbot last Wednesday were described today as “stupid”.
“If anti-apartheid demonstrators were the culprits then they were hoodwinked by the late switch of venue which made them miss the game – then they ‘alienated’ sympathy from their cause,” said the chairman of the parks committee Coun Idwal Hopkins.
He said: “I am myself an anti-apartheid supporter. One can demonstrate by booing and shouting, but to resort to vandalism is a stupid act.”
The authority has ordered two new sets of posts but will have to wait about 10 weeks for delivery at a cost of £70. TELEPHONE users in Kings Road, Canton, have the warmest call box in Cardiff – complete with potted plant and wash basin.
For above Mrs Elizabeth Halford’s front door is a small blue enamel sign which says: “You may telephone from here.”
Inside a small room is a coin-box phone.
Mrs Halford originally installed the phone for students who lodged with her, but about 18 months ago the Post Office appealed to people who rented coin-box phones to make them available to the public.
This, said a Post Office spokesman, was a move to counter the growing vandalism in phone-boxes.
Since Mrs Halford responded the phone has been used daily for anything from a chat to relatives to emergency calls for doctors.
Ex-policeman Mr Titus Ashton, of Kings Road, said: “It’s a godsend.”
But a public call-box in a private house has its disadvantages.
Mrs Halford said she did not open the door after 10pm and was careful about the people she let into the house. MERTHYR Town reserves’ match against Pembroke Borough was postponed after the Town lost their team coach.
The Welsh League game – booked to kick off at 2pm – was called off at noon with Merthyr still looking for their minibus. Merthyr now face a fine of up to £100 for postponing the match.
The driver was supposed to collect the coach from a garage at 10am for the 200-mile round trip to Pembroke. But when he got to the garage there was no coach.
“We didn’t know what to do. We searched for it everywhere,” said the Merthyr chairman Mr Maolwyn Davies.
“The coach eventually turned up at the back of the garage, although we were told to pick it up on the forecourt,” he said. COMEDIAN Eric Morecambe sat through 40 minutes of flickering floodlighting at Luton last night – then confessed to being in the dark as to how his team had beaten Cardiff City.
Said the Luton director, at the end of a day’s TV rehearsals: “The black-out? Best part of the match by far, but I’m