AS November of 1969 dawned, the human race was preparing for its second visit to the Moon, due in a fortnight.

In a sign of the times, the Christmas toy fair advert for Bon Marche – these days it’s Debenhams - had Santa waving cheerily from the open hatch of a recently splashed-down Apollo capsule.

“Mums and dads,” said the blurb, “Bring the children along this Saturday, November 8th, to see Father Christmas on his arrival by Space Capsule at Coate Water.

“Splash Down at 9.30am. Direct from the Moon!

“See Santa as he gets out of the space capsule and makes his way to the waiting rocket at Coate Water Car Park.”

Sadly, no photos of the event itself appear to survive, so we are unable to say how Rudolf and his colleagues survived re-entry.

The toys on offer at Debenhams included a 12ft by 6ft Scalextric layout for the equivalent of £5.25, junior tea sets for just under a pound and table tennis sets for the equivalent of about 79p.

Swindon’s new MP, 26-year-old Conservative Christopher Ward, made his first appearance in the Commons since his election a month earlier.

The by-election that brought the solicitor and Berkshire County Council member to Parliament was prompted by the surprise resignation of his Labour predecessor, Francis Noel-Baker.

We photographed Mr Ward waving cheerily from a train window at Swindon Station and later strolling in Westminster with his wife, Elizabeth.

He had told the Swindon ticket inspector who stamped his second class single to Paddington: “I’d like to keep this and frame it. Is there any way I can do that?”

The inspector suggested: “Tell them at Paddington you want to keep it to show for your expenses.”

Sadly for Mr Ward, his only real distinction as an MP would be losing his seat 231 days after being elected to it, putting him among the MPs with the shortest periods of service. David Stoddart retook the seat for Labour in the General Election the following June and held it until the Tory landslide of 1983.

Mr Ward attempted to return to Parliament during the 1970s, but without success.

Another man making a journey that week in 1979 was Swindonian James Partington. He was about to return to Australia after visiting his home town for the first time since emigrating six years earlier.

The 41-year-old had gone with his wife, Barbara, a former Adver reporter, and their two young children.

He revealed that he’d started an information agency for other British emigres, with the aim of helping them to integrate, and was secretary of the New South Wales Federation of British Migrant Clubs.

“We are trying to reduce the number of immigrants returning to Britain,” he said.

“There is very little use in people going there with the idea that it is another England complete with sunshine.

“People must realise that it is a different country, and that monetary values are different. It’s like a youthful United States there, with great commercial and engineering vigour.

“It isn’t hidebound by tradition.”

With Armistice Day approaching, we ran what still ranks as one of our most poignant stories about war and its impact.

At 77 Frances Palmer lived alone in a Tavistock Road flat found for her by the WRVS.

A little over 53 years earlier, at 11am on August 1, 1916, she had married Jack the Swindonian bricklayer she’d come from London for in 1912. The couple had met on January 5 of 1912 and become engaged in the October.

At 4pm on their wedding day, five hours after they exchanged vows, Jack had to catch the train to his camp at Chatham because his leave had ended.

Frances was never to see her husband again. Jack was 22 when he died on November 19, 1916, two days after being wounded in the Battle of the Somme.

Frances told us: “I can’t say I was surprised to learn that Jack was dead. I had a dream about a fortnight earlier.

“It seemed to me that it was all confusion where he was. I saw his face and then a list of names with ‘Died’ written on the top.

“Then I saw his face again.”

She went on to marry her second husband, a Railway Works labourer called Albert, in 1939. They were together until his death 20 years later. Photos of Albert and Jack stood side by side on the hearth in their widow’s flat, and Frances often visited her local Royal British Legion Club – “…but that’s more for the company.”

The week also saw the Adver report on a pioneering integration project between Churchfields School pupils and young people with disabilities who were having physiotherapy at Princess Margaret Hospital.

Churchfields student Lilian Garrard, 14, said: “I would like to do something similar when I leave school. The children at the hospital aren’t any different from any other children.”

Pioneering work aside, other aspects of the story place it firmly 44 years ago.

For one thing, it was headlined: “Schoolgirls help the spastics.”

For another, the Churchfields pupils involved were all girls, and a teacher told us: “It is part of my job to train them as housewives and mothers.”