A SWINDON mum shared some parenting wisdom this week in 2002.

Sue Povey certainly knew what she was talking about, as she and husband Ian had 14 children, aged from 18 months to 22 years.

A 15th, child, Isabelle, would be born the following year. The Poveys, of Grange Park, were regularly featured in newspaper and magazine articles.

In 2004 they were invited by 20th Century Fox to an advance screening of Steve Martin comedy Cheaper By The Dozen, which was about a couple with a large brood.

When we spoke to Sue in 2002, she had just launched a newsletter called Full House, packed with advice for other large families. It was printed and posted out, presumably because at that time there were still plenty of people without computers and internet access.

Sue said: “Having such a large family myself, I thought it would be good to share my experiences with others.

“I worked on the first issue of Full House for about four hours a week, over the period of a month, producing and printing it myself.

“The first issue went out to about 30 families throughout the country and I now hope to produce the newsletter quarterly, gradually involving more and more families.

“From the letters I’ve already received, it seems many large families share similar problems, from things like tummy bugs which go around the family to being blamed for trouble, because there are so many of us.

“However, full house doesn’t just target very big families like mine. I’m interested in hearing from people with four children and upwards, and I’ve been surprised by how many there are.”

The week saw a change at the top of the borough council, with Kevin Small announced as incoming leader of the Labour group and therefore of the council itself.

He took over from Sue Bates, whose administration had suffered severe body blows in the form of devastating reports following probes of its education and social services departments. The council was officially rated as among the poorest of its kind in the country, and Coun Small’s new role was widely seen as a poisoned chalice. The Conservatives would be in charge the following year, albeit without an overall majority.

We said: “Coun Small (Western) was deputy council leader and took control after a secret ballot by the Labour group at a meeting on Tuesday after beating competition from Coun John Taylor.

“He is known as the Quango Kid, earning a living by serving on quangos such as the Strategic Rail Authority and Police Federation, but is quick to point out that he has worked on the railways and spent six years in the stores at Swindon Council.”

The new leader told us: “There are members of the council, of various political persuasions, who I believe are hell bent on damaging Swindon and its good name for political gain.

“The majority of councillors want to see Swindon Council succeed and realise if it fails all councillors will be blamed.

“The few negative people will be sidelined if they do not wish to be a part.”

Still on the subject of people starting new roles, we ran a feature whose theme was that it’s never too late to find contentment or achieve an ambition.

We spoke to three people who had decided to leave roles which made them unhappy.

They included Tony Bareham, 56, a former acting head teacher of Hreod Parkway School, who had left the previous year, having become disenchanted with government meddling, underfunding, and paperwork.

“I loved teaching,” he said. “I’d done it all my life, but at the beginning of 1998 I took a good look at what I was doing and decided to make some changes.”

After stints as a van driver and hospital records officer, he answered a Swindon Advertiser recruitment ad for a fleet car delivery driver at the Fish Brothers dealership.

He missed some of his old colleagues but felt no regret over his decision.

“When I see people I used to work with, who are also no longer teaching, we say, ‘Why didn’t we do this before?’”

We also spoke to Peter Swadden, a former tanker driver who had become a greyhound trainer, and Paul Buley, who had spent 19 years in banking before becoming a student nurse.

Paul said: “The idea to do nursing wasn’t to do anything on a grand scale. I just wanted to live, work and care for people in my community and I definitely feel happier.”

In a truly diverse week for stories, we visited the Swindon Capri Club during one of their meetings at the Cold Harbour pub in Blunsdon.

There were 15 hardcore members, each a committed devotee of the unique Ford vehicle best known as the favoured transport of Bodie and Doyle in classic TV show The Professionals.

The club had been founded a decade earlier by pharmaceutical worker Mark Battocchio, 35, from Shaw, a Capri owner since the age of 19.

The club were pioneers in a sense, as it hadn’t been long since Capris were ridiculed as symbols of excess. These days they’re regarded as classics.

Mark said: “People who pour scorn on the Capri do not know what they’re missing out on.”

We hope the club’s cars are all still on the road.