A SWINDON sailor bantered with a New York cabbie, Dorcan briefly became Pamplona and fab’n’groovy blokes shunned barbers for hairdressers.

When it came to interesting images, Adver readers didn’t go short during the first full week of May, 1969.

If former Leading Air Mechanic Trevelyn Murtough cares to get in touch and share his memories of the Big Apple as it was in those days, we’d love to hear from him.

The young man, whose family home was in Pewsham Road, Penhill, was there to service Fleet Air Arm craft entered in the Transatlantic Air Race, an event commemorating Alcock and Brown’s first crossing 50 years earlier.

We said: “Trev was educated at Penhill Secondary Modern School and worked for a year as a machine operator with British Railways in Swindon before joining the Navy in 1962.

“He has toured the Far East in the aircraft carrier HMS Victorious, visiting such places as Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and the Philippines.

“He met his wife, Patricia, at his home base, Yeovilton Naval Air Station, and they now live near there at Beacon House, Somerton.”

Shrivenham Road in Swindon was still home to Bortthwick and Sons’ slaughterhouse, whose ‘clients’ that week included a group of young bulls.

One managed to escape and head for Dorcan, claiming a place in posterity as he faced the final curtain.

“It was his weakness for the opposite sex that finally lost him his freedom,” we said.

“Five shapely heifers were turned onto the playing field of St Joseph’s School, where he had staked his territory.

“After a little exercise they trotted calmly back to the truck – with the bull close on their heels.

“He had made his escape by charging a cowman in the stomach in the slaughterhouse.

“The bull ran down Shrivenham Road and into Dorcan Way, where a startled postman abandoned his bike and ran as the bull careered towards him.

“Crowds of housewives and schoolchildren witnessed the end to the young bull’s short-lived freedom.”

A story of an entirely different kind took our photographer over to Old Town, were hair stylist Tina Martin had a salon called Year 2000AD in Wood Street.

There Tina catered for people of all ages – and both genders.

Unisex hair salons haven’t been an especially remarkable thing since about the late 1970s, but in 1969 they were more than unusual enough to make the news.

The only women to be found at most barber’s shops were in magazines left for perusal in the waiting area, and if a man was seen in a salon, he tended to be a stylist rather than a customer.

Among Tina’s regulars in Wood Street was Phil Wheeler, who said he couldn’t remember the last time he visited a barber’s.

Photographed wearing the curlers that gave him what we described as the Jimi Hendrix look, Phil said: “She cuts it the way I want.

“I don’t have to comb it, just run my fingers through it and it’s fine.”

Phil, we revealed, played bass for a band called Elijah and the Goat.

We added: “He used to wear his hair shoulder-length and says that men who wear their hair aggressively short are only trying to prove their masculinity.”

Phil was firmly in a gender minority at Tina’s salon, though, and the stylist thought many men lacked the confidence to follow in his footsteps.

“I wouldn’t mind opening a salon for men and women,” she said, “but I would do it in London and not here.

“Some men want colour rinses and one boy even brought his wig in to be set here.”

Another Adver photograph that week showed a caravan being hoisted by a huge crane over the roof of a house in Prior’s Hill, Wroughton.

It accompanied a story about a family reunion, with a man called Stephen Bowsher coming home.

We said: “Stephen was returning from 40 years ‘in exile’ in Bournemouth, to the county in which he was born, and he will live with his wife, Ruth, in the garden of his brother’s house.

“The house is, in fact, jointly owned by Mr Tom Bowsher and his sister, Mrs Daisy Preddy, who nurses at RAF Wroughton.

“Also present as the 70ft jib lowered the caravan on to a prepared site in the garden was Mrs Bobbie Smith, sister to Stephen, Tom and Daisy.”

Mrs Smith told us: “The object of the exercise is to bring us closer together. We haven’t any children to look after us as we get older, and so we’re going to look after each other.”

We added: “Stephen Bowsher, who is 72, explained that his wife suffers from arthritis, and that now he would be spared the worry of who would look after her if anything happened to him.

“The whole family looked on anxiously as the 20-foot caravan, weighing 1½ tons, was lifted up from the road and swung towards the garden.

“It had been brought up from Bournemouth the same morning, and by lunchtime the operation was complete.”