For decades, The Spectator’s Portrait of the Week has provided a concise record of national and international news. But there are interesting or at least intriguing stories in our local and regional press, too. Here are a dozen:
A 21-year-old cannabis grower from Swavesey, Cambridgeshire, has been sentenced to 80 hours’ community service after he summoned the police during a break-in. According to prosecutors, most of his plants had blight.
A coach driver on a school trip to Ashton Pools, Manchester, has been fined £35 for parking in a lay-by while he ran to give a boy his forgotten swimming kit.
Thirty people were evacuated from a pub in Ockbrook, near Derby, after its lights blew and all its appliances simultaneously began to overheat and smoke; thieves had stripped the copper from an electrical transformer in the field behind it.
The police station in Redland, Bristol, may become a primary school. The local council, which expects to need an extra 4,000 primary places over the next four years, is soliciting suggestions on other buildings it could convert.
Two climbers stranded on the eastern traverse of Tryphan, in Snowdonia, were saved after sending mountain rescue a mobile-phone photograph of the spot where they were trapped. A man had died there four years earlier.
Two budgies were rescued from a house-fire in Moseley, Birmingham. The operation required about ten firefighters, with breathing apparatus.
A cat that went missing eight weeks ago in Birkenhead has turned up five miles away across the Mersey in Kirkdale, Liverpool.
The ratio of jobseekers’ allowance claimants to job vacancies in Walsall is now 8.5:1.
A civil servant from Newbiggin Hall in Newcastle has won £2.6 million playing an online slot machine.
The last independent bookshop in Burnley has closed, although one in Colne is apparently thriving.
Weymouth beach has bought two all-terrain wheelchairs for the use of disabled visitors.
No one who has so far spoken to the local paper can explain what caused a loud bang in Stapenhill, Burton upon Trent.
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