Reporter’s Diary

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33942, 8 September 1975, Page 3

Reporter’s Diary

Clock watchers CLOCK collectors recently formed themselves into a society based in Christchurch and they plan to launch themselves on the public this month with an exhibition of about 200 clocks, and many watches, in the Town Hall’s conference room from September 24 to 27. Mr Les Everett, the president of the Clock and Watch Collectors’ Society, has about 10Q clocks at home. Even so, he says, his wife always takes her time from the electric one on the kitchen stove. The best of his and other members’ collections will be on display. One of the most interesting will be a 6ft French crockery grandfather clock, reputed to be one of only four in the world. It will be brought to the exhibition by a member who lives at Orari. School drinkers TWO PER CENT of New South Wales school pupils between the ages of 12 and 17 may be problem drinkers. This was indicated by a survey covering 2741 children at Government and private schools late last year. Two per cent of those questioned were problem drinkers, and a further 16 per cent were classed as possible or potential problem drinkers. A third of all boys in the survey and

21.8 per cent of the girls claimed to drink alcoho at least once a week. Dampened down THE CHRISTCHURCF police were called out tc 15 fewer domestic dis putes last month thar they attended in July. Per haps the wet weather in August served to keep more husbands at home suggested the commandei of the Christchurch Police District (Chief Superintendent G. E. Twentyman) One hundred and eightythree family fights were dealt with. Succum bed THE POLICE had little difficulty in finding the burglar who broke into a grocer’s shop in Metz, France, last week. He was found unconscious in a back room after drinking 1| bottles of the drinks he had stolen. Dodgy sporran ONE OF THE little dodges with which viewers amuse themselves during the more drawn-out period programmes on television is spotting anachronisms or other mistakes in the dialogue, costumes or settings. An Ashburton man who signs himself “Dunvegan” says that John Brown, Queen Victoria’s faithful old Scottish retainer in “Edward VII,” was shown wearing a sporran with tassels that

hung unevenly, and only one of which had a silver ferrule. “In pipe-band circles this would earn the wearer a black mark,” says the reader, who claims to be a wearer of the kilt himself. He felt that there must be a reason for the slip, if it was one, because he read an article about the television series which said that authenticity was a top priority. Drunken jumbos WILD ELEPHANTS have been gorging fermented fruit and going on drunken rampages through a Tanzanian game reserve, the game rangers say. The i elephants got drunk in the I Mikumi Game Park, about j 150 miles west of Dar-es- ; Salaam, by eating a type I of fruit that ferments on j the branch. Rangers saw j them trumpeting, scream- ! ing, knocking down trees, 1 and chasing other, smaller i animals. 1 Ao use IT IS AN old trade-union joke that the most useless thing in the workaday world is a vote of thanks ! from the management. ' Now Gordon Tait, the | Christchurch bookseller i who has a foot in both | camps (as employer and trade unionist), reckons he I has discovered the second most useless thing in the world — a vote of censure 1 from the union executive. He has learned that the executive of the Shop Assistants’ Union has voted to censure him for publicising union affairs.