THERE was a photo of a shiny, modern-looking new library on one of our front pages this week in 2003.

Unfortunately the building was in Bournemouth.

Swindon’s Central Library was still a collection of creaky old cabins but that, we said, was about to change.

The south coast connection was that as with Bournemouth, Private Finance Initiative money was to be used for the Swindon project.

We wrote: “A £15 million central library, museum and art gallery will form the centrepiece of Swindon’s new cultural quarter in Theatre Square.

“All three political parties on the council have today backed plans to rejuvenate the run-down and bland area of town by flattening buildings to make way for the multi-million pound structure.”

We added: “The preliminary footprint for the new library stretches from the current ramshackle town library in Regent Circus around the Wyvern Theatre to the Princes Street car park.

“It will mean flattening around 20 shops in Theatre Square.”

Nothing of the sort happened, of course, although Swindon had a fine new Central Library by 2008.

Another story involved a woman whose attempt to sell weapons online was thwarted.

Jill Sansom from Moredon had been turned down by eBay, which we explained was “…an online marketplace that lets individuals trade goods without leaving their desks.”

The weapons she was forbidden to sell? Some squeaky soft PVC novelty toy truncheons which she was offering for £1.50 apiece.

“It’s ridiculous,” Mrs Sansom said. “They took it off the site because they classed it as a dangerous weapon, but if they had looked at the description they would have realised it was only a toy.”

She also pointed out that items currently available on eBay included a selection of knives and daggers, some of them intended for throwing.

Although Mrs Sansom had stated in her product description that the truncheons were made of PVC and squeaked when squeezed, the online auction house claimed they were not clearly identified as toys.

The internet and a newish reality show inspired a distinctly off-the-wall bid to engage young people in local politics. Earlier in the year, less than 30 percent of voters had turned out for local elections.

We reported: “They say politics is a jungle and for the next week five Swindon councillors will slug it out in an online version of I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!

“Starting from today Justin Tomlinson (Con, Abbey Meads), Glenn Smith (Con, Covingham and Nythe,) Stan Pajak (Lib Dem, Eastcott), Fay Howard (Lab, Parks) and Steve Allsopp (Lab, Parks) will be slogging it out trying to convince secondary school children across the borough why they should be crowned King or Queen of Swindon Council.

“This week pupils from Swindon’s 10 secondary schools will get to fire a volley of questions at each of the councillors, whose task is simply to come up with convincing answers.”

Polling was to be conducted online.

There was to be no eating of animals’ unmentionable parts and no fending off spiders or snakes, which is presumably why the event seems to have attracted little further attention.

Try as we might, we can find no clue in our archives as to who won.

The week saw us visit Swindon’s Great Western Hospital, which had opened the previous year, for a feature about its art.

We said: “Swindon Artscape, which commissions and promotes a broad range of visual, performing and public arts on behalf of Swindon Council, has been working with the hospital to create a relaxing and interesting environment conducive to patient recovery.

“The trust has acquired a collection of 45 contemporary visual art works by nationally acclaimed artists on long term loan from the Hayward Gallery on London’s South Bank and the Sheridan Russell Gallery in Marylebone, London.”

The most spectacular of the works we highlighted were Amber Hiscott’s stained glass piece in the Atrium, called The Journey, and Sasha Ward’s window in the chaplaincy, called Horizons.

At Bristol Crown Court, former banker Glyn Razzell went on trial accused of murdering his estranged wife, Linda, in Swindon on March 19, 2002.

In spite of her blood being found in the car he was driving, Razzell denied the charge. He continued to deny it after being convicted and has denied it throughout his imprisonment.

Razzell wasn’t the only murderer in the news that week.

In 1972 a man called Roland White had killed a nurse while living in Ramsbury. The garage worker had been sent to repair his victim’s broken-down car on the A4. He strangled her for reasons which were never established and dumped her body at a former airfield.

For White, life in prison turned out to mean barely 20 years, and on being released from an open prison he went to live in Chiseldon.

Three months later, having been arrested for drink-driving and perhaps fearing a return to prison, the 54-year-old hanged himself in local woodland.