Reporter’s Diary

Press, Issue 33846, 19 May 1975, Page 3

Reporter’s Diary

Camouflage NEW ZEALAND’S Prime Minister (Mr Rowling) has been charged with obfuscation at the Commonwealth Heads of State conference in Kingston, Jamaica, recently. The charge was made by a reporter of “The Times” who records in his column what he regarded as Mr Rowling’s best circumlocutory utterance: “We hope that the situation in Vietnam has reached resolution as far as the conflicting parties are concerned.” The reporter thinks that Mr Rowling meant he hoped the fighting in Vietnam was over. Chance meeting FROM the “Small World” department comes a report of a chance meeting between two Christchurch women. Friends for many years, one has been living in England for more than a year and last February the other decided to travel the world, intending to visit her friend when she reached England. In Paris the traveller’s plans were well enough settled to write to her friend giving time of arrival. The letter was written and the traveller set oft' to post it, a brief walk during which she crossed the Seine by one of its many bridges. Part way across the bridge, and with the letter still in her hand, the traveller came face to face with her friend who was in Paris for the week-end. Street dreams SLEEP might come easily, but apparently not cheaply in the Rockefeller household. The American VicePresident (Mr Rockefeller) has bought a $35,000 bed designed by the surrealist artist, Max Ernst. The bed, described as “an apparatus for dreaming,” comes with a 7ft mink coverlet, tinted mirrors backed by Ernst lithographs, and trapdoors for lamps, telephones, and stereo sets. Party line COMMERCIAL fishermen have no doubts as to how Japanese and Russian fishing craft get early warning of possible air or sea intervention to try to catch them within the 12mile limit. “They may hear radio news broadcasts, but there is a much quicker way,” said an Akaroa trawler owner. “These big foreigners bristle with radio antennae, and we are cerain

that they monitor all calls that go out from us on the marine radio. The same applies to messages sent by commercial aircraft. We are fairly certain that neither the Air Force nor the Navy uses coded messages to start a search, and the intruders, by monitoring service radio chatter, get ample warning of an impending visit, and are well away before they are spotted.” Deputised

THESE school holidays will long be remembered by two small boys in Linwood for providing them with half a day of glory in the eyes of their peers. Police inquiries brought a patrol to the home of one of them where it was believed a watch, connected with a robbery inquiry, had been thrown over the fence and into the garden by a person running down the street. The watch was there; and so, it seemed to the police, were half the primary school children in Linwood. A police photographer was summoned to record the location and in the interim the son of the house and his friend were made “sort of deputies” to stand guard on the spot so it would not be disturbed. So under the massed gaze of admiring school friends the two stood guard for half the day, a young boy’s dream almost come true. Orbiting ova RUSSIAN scientists have developed a space poultry farm, according to the “Soviet Weekly.” The unit can be carried aboard spacecraft or sited on space platforms and provides a healthy environment for keeping fowls. The scientists say the unit can produce one egg and 12 to 13oz of chicken meat a day, so that future space crews can look forward to an egg for breakfast. Presumably the next problem will be to develop orbiting pigsties to provide the bacon. Annie Oakley’s all UGANDA’S President (Mr Amin) will be accompanied by five well-armed women bodyguards when he visits neighbouring Rwanda soon, Radio Uganda has reported. The bodyguards, four policewomen and a prison wardress, beat the combined team of the Uganda and Ghana armed forces in a recent shooting match.