Reporter’s Diary

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33964, 3 October 1975, Page 3

Reporter’s Diary

Till sprung

BURGLARS who broke into the Harry Warlock hairdressing salon in New Regent Street on Wednesday night left a seasonal token after rifling the till. They took out the “float” of about $2O, and replaced the money with a bunch of spring flowers. The modus operandi boys will be taking note. Substitute

NOW it can be told. The Antarctic explorers’ memorial plaque which Antarctic people will see in the Christdhurch Cathedral on Sunday when they attend a ceremony to lay up a new United States flag is not the one which Admiral G. J. Dufek unveiled in that shadowy corner of the Cathedral in 1955. The large bronze plaque which was cast in Boston and shipped out in the icebreaker U.S.S. Glacier was missing when the vessel berthed at Lyttelton. Frantic efforts were made to find a replacement for the ceremony, and in the event few of those present knew that the plaque they were dedicating was not a bronze one at all, but was made of carved and painted wood. The secret was kept for several months until the United States Navy’s Antarctic Support Force was able to obtain a replacement. Siamese twins

THE BIRTH of Siamese twins in a remote village of the British Solomon Islands has been reported to the Christchurch headquarters of the Lepers’ Trust Board. Sister Maisie McLaughlin, of the Roman Catholic Medical Mission in South Malaita (where a Lepers’ Trust Board grant was used to build a nurses’ home), says the twins were born joined from sternum to umbilicus, facing one another. Doctors were not sure whether they shared a heart, but believed that they did share other organs. Fortunately, she wrote, the babies died. Name changes

MRS H. S. BAILEY, of New Brighton, says her late husband had a similar surprise about his name to that reported yesterday. He had always thought that his name was Harry Cyril Bailey. It wasn’t until he turned 60 and collected a full birth certificate so that he could claim the pension that he learned he had been fooled by phonetics. His middle name was really Searle. Failed to shout TO GET beer up to Blenheim, New Zealand Breweries arranges it so that a full tanker from Christchurch meets an empty one from Blenheim somewhere. along the Kaikoura Coast, and the drivers swap over so that both end up at home. One day, says the breweries’ news bulletin, the tankers failed to meet. As time and the miles went by both drivers began to worry, and stopped at hotels along the route to inquire whether their opposite numbers had been seenYes, the tanker had gone past some time ago. both

were told at different places. Turning back, they eventually met. and it took a bit of puzzled discussion before they worked it out. They had disappeared into the twin road tunnels north of Kaikoura at the same time. Pool alarm

A PALMERSTON NORTH firm claims that its alarm device for home swimming pools saved two lives while the prototypes were undergoing tests in private pools. The pools were fenced, too. The alarm, called a “Lifeguard,” is powered by a battery, and floats in the pool. When the surface of the water is broken an electrical contact is made and an alarm bell rings for just over a minute inside the house. The firm says its alarm will be triggered even by a cat falling into the pool. The device will be marketed through New Zealand, and will cost $98.50. Boobigee BOOBIGEE is an unusual Nauruan word — but then it’s an unusual custom. It means that if you like one of a person’s material possessions you boobigee it. Not only dobs he hand it over, he will try his hardest to look pleased about it. A Nauruan custom which is regarded in some quarters as a curse and in others as a reasonable equaliser, boobigee has led to some Nauruans’ being stripped of their possessions. On the other hand, it has also enabled families without a refrigerator,, or a sewing machine, to claim one from a wealthier acquaintance. When Jeanette, the daughter of the President of Nauru (Mr Hammer Deßoburt), turned 21, her father gave her a car. To ensure that it remained in the family, he bought several more, so that boobigee could be honoured without Miss Deßobu’-t’s being deprived immediately of her gift. Vengeance next “IN COMMON with the rest of the Western World this country is entering upon 10 years of Tribulation that will be climaxed by the GREAT ASSIZES when the portentous Halley’s Comet is due in the Heavens,” says a warning from one of the editor’s more iconoclastic correspondents. (Halley’s Comet is not expected back until 1986.) “Newspaper editors need not imagine they are going -to be held guiltless when the masses really wake up to what has bugged the whole Earth since 1914 — preservation of the fraud of bogus money creation.” says the correspondent. “Every editor of a major daily would be well advised to resign within five years, change his name and disappear to another country. The energy now going into PROTEST will then be concentrated on VENGEANCE!!!” First choice

SOMETHING is brewing when the Tea Council of New Zealand goes to the trouble of selecting for its investigation of the Sri Lanka tea industry a journalist bv the name of Bell. T.