Working for a newspaper, you invariably become hardened to the fact that almost everybody you come across feels quite happy to be as critical as they like about your publication.

It's par for the course and, after a while, you learn to take comments with a pinch of salt - because while everybody's comments as a reader are valid, you'd soon have a breakdown if you took everything to heart.

Let's face it, a large proportion of people aren't over-kindly disposed to the media in general.

But while there is a groundswell of opinion that things used somehow to be better back in the good old days, the reality is that all kinds of things were frightful back in nineteen-hundred-and-frozen-to-death.

The media - or rather the press and, to a degree, the wireless service from the BBC - was very different back in those days and it is interesting, and frequently quite amusing, to look back and see how things have changed.

So when Mid Devon District Council staff recently found a bound file of Gazettes from 1926 while cleaning out the attic of The Great House, in St Peter Street, we jumped at the chance to take a look. And what a diet of news - and other things - they used to serve up in the 1920s.

In one edition, a Russian parable written by one Leo Tolstoy is published alongside the story of an Exeter man accused of attempting to murder his wife.

But you didn't need to do anything as severe as trying to murder your wife to land in court.

According to the paper, one Walter Green was up before the bench in January 1926 for the crime of running away from the parish and leaving his wife and two children - and he was sentenced to a month's hard labour.

But the scoop of the year had to be suggestions for ways in which readers could amuse themselves at New Year parties.

These days we would assume that food and booze would be the mainstay of the vast bulk of parties. But not in the 1920s.

The Gazette came up with a whole host of suggestions of how people like to amuse themselves, not least a game called Are You There?

"Two gentlemen are blindfolded and lie on their back on the floor, their feet pointing to opposite corners of the room, their heads about a yard apart. Each is then given a newspaper rolled up.

"On asking the question 'Are you there?', the other answers 'Yes' and both then have to strike at where they think the head of the other is. They may, of course, dodge as far as possible, but must not get up from the floor.

"The game is very amusing and quite harmless."

Amusing and harmless it may be, but I would rather immerse my head in a pan full of hot, mulled wine than take part in any of those sorts of shenanigans.

Still, at least they knew how to amuse themselves back then...

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