THE BIG SLEEP: A shoe shop owner told how cool raiders walked into the bedroom of his Bury home where he and his wife were sleeping, before helping themselves to cash and jewellery worth more than £2,000. It was the second time that year the family had slept through a burglary at their Manchester Road home.

HOME SUPPORT: Council workmen were called out to shore up a house that was in danger of collapse. The property, at the corner of Dumers Lane and Britain Street, had been affected by water seeping into the foundations following fractures in a nearby main.

LIGHT-FINGERED THIEVES: Fifty eight-feet long girders weighing a total of 2.5 tons were stolen from a motorway site at Bentley Lane, Walmersley.

CLOSE CALL: Garage mechanic Stuart Sellers didn't realised how dangerous it would be when he started welding the underneath of a car. Luckily he escaped injury when fire broke out in the inspection pit at his Baldingstone Garage at Walmersley. Stuart, 25, fled from the pit, which in seconds became an inferno. WAVE BYE BYE: Bury police were seeking thieves who towed away a £5,500 boat from a yard at Bridge Hall Fold, Heap Bridge. The boat, on a trailer, was a 24ft long Bermudan sloop weighing 3.5 tons.

CRAZY PAVING: The long hot summer of 1976 summer affected St Andrew's Vicarage in Ramsbottom so badly that the Rev R. R. Carmyllie, described it as "like the crazy house at Blackpool". The floors tilted, windows and doors no longer closed properly, and large cracks appeared in the walls because of the long spell of dry weather.