Reporter’s Diary

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33819, 16 April 1975, Page 3

Reporter’s Diary

Ski films ! SKIERS get a chance to ( see four films about their ; favourite sport this evening when two firms, Mount ! Cook Airlines and Spald- ! ing, Ltd. sponsor a show ’ called “Ski Film SpectacuI lar” in the Limes Room at the Town Hall. One film is ! about the last Winter ! Olympics, two are about I the weird snow sport of ! hot-dogging, and the fourth i is a Japanese film about ( ski-ing in New Zealand i which was filmed last win- ' ter at Coronet Peak and the Tasman Glacier. Proceeds ■ will be given to the Can- ( terbury Ski Patrol. Hoping WITH a lot less money moving around, most people are having to curtail their spending. But there is always the chance of a ; windfall. A Rugby league ( plaver was heard to ask his ! friend at the Showgrounds | whether he would be buy-

ing new boots this season. “I’m waiting to see the size of my tax refund,” was the reply. Curfeiv TOKYO’S police have dropped speed limits within the city from just over 30 m.p.h. to '25 m.p.h. They have also banned big-bore motor-cycles on main roads within the city after midnight. Both the slower speed and the curfew on big bikes are designed to give the city’s residents some peace and quiet. Another police move is to ban motor-cycles larger than 250 c.c. anywhere in Tokyo between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. That one is aimed at the city’s “outlaw" motorcycle gangs. Pit pae PARLIAMENT seems to have the effect of cutting politicians off from the rest of us. said Miss Colleen Dewe, a Dominion

councillor of the National Party, at the Y.W.C.A.’s seminar on “Women in Politics.” When M.P.s got to Wellington, she said, they seemed to live unnatural. lives “cocooned” in the Parliamentary set-up, and “they forget what life is like outside.” The real thing FANS of Frederick Forsyth, author of “The Day of the Jackal,” will be queuing to see another of his thrillers, “The Odessa File” when it comes here. A Christchurch couple saw it in Dunedin last week. He liked it: she hated it. When they got back to what they describe as their one-star-minus hotel, the key broke in the door to their room and the husband entertained his wife with a heart-stopping climb up a fire escape that threatened to part permanently from the hotel at every step. Much, much better than the movie, she said. Identified F.O. A GENUINE flying saucer will take off from British

soil tomorrow. It is a 30ft diameter “works study project” built at the Royal Aircraft Establishment’s base at Cardington. Bedfordshire. They say it could be the forerunner of a skyship capable of carrying up to 50 people. The first one has a cruising speed of only six miles an hour, but there is talk of building skyships that would be 700 ft in diameter and able to fly at 100 m.p.h. Their main advantage would be their ability to land in areas too difficult to reach by conventional forms of transport. To land they would hover over the landing area and then drop hawsers before being winched down. Aof durable THE Canterbury branch of the Post-primary Teachers' Association wants to look into the provision of courses about retirement for teachers. “We need to do something," said one member at the meeting where the matter was raised. “Statistics show that teachers last onlv 2.5 years after they retire."