1977 MONDAY DECEMBER 10
The Triangle being reduced to rubble, Cardiff City’s manager being supported by his wife and much more made the news 41 years ago this week
The Triangle comes crashing down
THE historic ironworkers’ cottages at The Triangle, Merthyr, were bulldozed to the ground in just a few hours today.
Merthyr Borough Council’s demolition team worked overtime at the weekend so that they could start flattening The Triangle this morning.
It took less than two hours to demolish the ironworkers’ cottages built in a triangle between 1833-51, which conservationists and historians have fought to save during the past four years.
Some of the building material will be saved by the National Museum of Wales, who have been promised full co-operation by the borough council.
But the bulk of the stones used to build The Triangle will be dumped by the lorry-load on a council tip just a few hundred yards away.
Merthyr’s chief technical officer, Mr Idris Williams, said the site, including houses behind The Triangle, will probably be cleared fully within a fortnight.
Manager’s wife sick of soccer abuse
CARDIFF City manager Jimmy Andrews has had more than his fair share of criticism lately, thinks his wife Dot, pictured below, and she was sick and tired of what she called “this unjustified abuse”.
As far as Jimmy is concerned, she says he accepts it as part and parcel of the job, realising that when you’re winning, you’re the greatest, and if you lose you’re rubbish.
But Dot herself doesn’t view the situation so calmly. Unbeknown to her husband, she telephoned the newspaper, feeling it was time something was done to set the record straight.
“The madder I get, the cooler he gets,” she said. “He’s been professional a long time. He knows the game backwards and these amateur nonentities don’t know how to kick a ball from here to there.”
On the latest tirade she remarked: “Joe Lovejoy (South Wales Echo soccer writer) is knocking Jimmy all the time.
“He should be getting down to the nitty gritty and finding out why the club’s in the position it’s in instead of bawling at the one man for the whole thing.”
She also mentioned how it felt to sit at a football match hearing cries of “Andrews out, Andrews out.”
“In fact, I once heard a player’s wife chanting that,” said Dot. “I looked on the field and her own husband was playing like a dumpling.” She declined to say which player’s wife it was.
£9k mission hunting for snails
A SCIENTIST with a £9,000 mission to hunt for snails and woodlice was to soon set off for the isolated island of Steep Holm, in the Bristol Channel.
A study had shown snails and woodlice on the island grow to an abnormally large size, information which could help back up the theory of evolution.
“I find myself more and more intrigued,” said Dr Cuillin Bantock of the North London Polytechnic, whose research has shown that things on Steep Holm are a little “different”.
His findings have led the Science Research Council to grant £9,000 to extend the island study.
Dr Bantock’s work has shown that Steep Holm’s land snails are abnormally large and “chromosomally different from those on the mainland”.
Creeping disease at RAF
PILFERING at RAF St Athan was like a “creeping disease” the chairman of the bench said at Cowbridge Magistrates’ Court when the cases against 12 men – some of them RAF policemen – were dealt with.
The chairman made his remarks when sentencing five of the men, all civilian employees at the base, in a court session.
Mr Tony Martyn, the chairman, told them: “We have heard about this malaise of pilfering. It was like a creeping disease and you were all infected by it. In some cases the connection was slight and in others you helped to spread it. The stealing was quite widespread and it must be regarded seriously.”
Carole writes and records carol
BRIDGEND sixth-former Carole Alcock was to spend her 17th birthday recording a carol which she composed for a BBC Nationwide competition.
It took Carole, of Glan Ogwr Road, Bridgend, just 15 minutes to write the three verses and five minutes to write the music.
Now she and Bethan Morgan, aged 17, and Sheila Davies, 18, classmates at Brynteg Comprehensive School, Bridgend, will perform the work for an audience of a millions, when the programme is screened.
“When I wrote the carol, which is called The First Christmastide, I saw it as a fairly lively piece. But when we went to London for rehearsal last week, the BBC had arranged it as a country-style number and it was great.
“The first time that the three of us had sung it together was after I heard from London that it had been selected for the competition.”
Now everyone in the school is talking about Carole’s carol.
Carole, who won a fourth prize at the Urdd Eisteddfod at Barry earlier this year with another composition, plays the piano, flute, percussion, drums, guitar, organ and recorder – but she does not plan a musical career.
“I’m hoping for a job in science or medicine when I finish my studies,” she said.
Sniffing glue warning
A SOUTH WALES mother who feared her 13-year-old son may die one day from the effects of sniffing glue warned parents to be on their guard against the rapidly growing and dangerous practice.
The mother knew as soon as she saw her son looking pale and dizzy that he’d been sniffing glue.
“He was cold, tired and had double vision,” said the mother from Pontypridd. “I sent for an ambulance and took him to hospital.”
It was the second time in a year that her son had been taken to hospital after a glue-sniffing session.
After his discharge yesterday he said that he did not think he would do it again, but his mother was not convinced.
“There is an awful lot of it going on around here. I think it is time other parents knew about it,” she said.
A community physician for Taff Ely, Dr Donald Foster, said children are warned of the dangers as part of the health education programme in school. Prolonged use could damage the liver and in some cases could kill, he said.