Reading’s postal system was facing a sticky situation in 1975, as a world shortage of “Gum Arabic” had made desperate customers resort to using their own glue to attach stamps to letters and parcels.

The Post Office, who were facing a ‘non-sticky’ nationwide problem, had admitted that many of their seven hundred thousand stamps were faulty.

Tom Runacre, who talked to the Chronicle from behind his post office counter in Caversham, explained that he was ‘keeping glue and sticky tape on the desk to stick them on properly’.

A huge 22-foot long pink papier mache hippopotamus was unveiled in London Street, Reading, to help celebrate Rodney Huggins celebrate becoming the National President of the Round Table.

His fellow branch members had made a model of his favourite animal because of the hit song “Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud” by the legendary singing duo Flanders and Swann.

Mr Huggins was due to spend 128 days of his year in office on trips abroad but admitted to the Chronicle: “This is a great honour, because I am the first person from Berkshire to become national president.”

After an interval of 18 months, greyhound racing was returning to Reading at a new stadium in Smallmead.

Many of the sports fans who gathered at the old stadium in Oxford Road in 1973 were pessimistic that the town would ever see it’s like again.

Manager of the new racing track, Martin Haigh, told the Chronicle: “We want plenty of variety and top-class dogs, I am sure it is what the public want and we will try to provide it.”

A special effects legend, Roger Dicken, who’s work included making giant monsters for the cinema screen, threw open his workshop in Pangbourne in 1975.

Mr. Dicken told the Chronicle: “Sometimes I lock myself in the morgue (his workshop’s nickname) for days until have finished something, I work whenever I feel like it.”

After leaving school and working in a circus, Roger joined the BBC as a lighting engineer and then worked in Slough for Gerry and Sylvia Anderson making the legendary puppet show “Thunderbirds”.

A few of his latest creations were soon to reach the cinemas of Reading, giant dinosaurs terrorising the cast of the movie “The Land That Time Forgot”.

A Courage brewery worker was bringing back to life a part of the town’s beer making heritage 44 years ago, by making replica miniatures of brewery drays.

Derrek West told the Chronicle: “The beer from Simonds was delivered around town and it was a common sight, but the increase in cars and lorries meant they went out of service in the sixties.”

A Tilehurst family got more than they bargained for when a local farmer gifted them a new-born lamb in 1974, and 15 months later he was proving to be quite a handful.

Larry the sheep had grown to full size and Diane Wade told the Chronicle: “We never have to mow the lawn, Larry happily chews it flat, but he does like the occasional flower.”