Reporter’s Diary

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33965, 4 October 1975, Page 3

Reporter’s Diary

Step forward YOU WIN a few, you lose a few. Reporters have been restrained recently from reporting certain things they feel their readers should know about, but yesterday the battle shifted a little in the other direction when the New Zealand Woolbuyers’ Association dropped its guard to allow a reporter from “The Press” to attend its annual meeting for the first lime. It is a body which has always conducted its business in strict privacy, but it seems that the policy has now been changed to one of greater involvement with other sections of the wool trade, including growers.

Riding again TWO OF Newman’s early drivers, Mr Laurrie Evan’s and Mr Ruben Betts — both in their late 80’s — will be riding in style tomorrow when the coachline takes them for a ride around the sights of Christchurch in its new air-conditioned coaches. They will be with a large group of Senior Citizens Club members who will be taken up on a three-hour tour around the Port Hills and out to Queen Elizabeth II Park and the airport. Intellectually handicapped children and people from the sheltered workshops will also be taken for rides in the new buses, which are two of 10 being built for the company. The next two to be delivered will be used on the Christchurch-Nel-son run. Landlady rocked THE ROCK star, Elton John, is being sued for SUS7O,OOO ($NZ55,000) by his landlady for alleged damage to the home he rented in Los Angeles for one year. The suit filed by Mrs Iris Schirmer said the home was “unhabitable” after John moved out last May. Her suit charged John with burning cigarette holes in a rug, chipping furniture, bending silver candlesticks, cutting holes in walls and marring floors. The suit said he also removed crystal glassware when he left the house. Spy honoured PROFESSOR Klaus Fuchs, the former British atom spy, has been awarded East Germany’s national Gold Prize for his achievements in science. Professor Fuchs, aged 64, has been living in East Germany since his release from a British prison in 1959. He has been deputy director of the East German Nuclear Research Institute at. Rossendorf, near Dresden, ever since. In keeping IT WOULD never have done for the auctioneer to be seen frefreshing himself from a common kitchen glass during the auction of “antiques and fine art collectors’ items” at the Te Kura Lounge on Thursday. Mr N. H. McCrostie rose to the occasion by using this cut crystal water jug and glass, pictured here in the cubby hole behind his auctioneer’s rostrum.

Trying drugs DRUG experimentation is increasing among American youth, and more whites and females are joining the trend, according to four surveys released by the National Institute in Drug Abuse. They disclosed that between 1969 and 1975 male high school seniors had a three-fold increase in marijuana and amphetamine use and a four-fold increase in barbiturate use. This year, according to one of the surveys, 44.9 per cent of the senior boys said they had experimented with marijuana, compared with only 13.4 per cent five years ago. But indications were that most who experimented with illegal drugs either stopped or used them only occasionally.

Flug ceremonies BY COINCIDENCE there will be two ceremonies to lay up American flags on Sunday, one in Christchurch Cathedral and the other in St Paul’s Cathedral. Wellington. Mr Armistead I. Selden, the United States Ambassador is to present an American flag and a U.S. Marine Corps flag to the cathedral to replace two similar flags which used to be in the Old St Pauls Cathedral,- which is now in the charge of the Historic Places Trust. The old flags, presented in 1947 to commemorate the Marines’ association with Wellington during the war, are going back to the old cathedral. Many Marines worshipped in the old building while stationed in Wellington between action at Guadalcanal and the assault on Tarawa. Are ice British? SURELY Sir Edmund Hillary was the first British climber to scale Mount Everest, suggests Jan Morris in a letter to “The Times.” As James Morris (he has since changed his sex) he was “The Times” correspondent on the expedition which resulted in the first conquest of the peak by Hillary and Tensing. Writing from a village in Wales, Jan Morris expresses surprise ai the description of the latest conquerors as "the first Britons” to reach the summits “It never occurred to me in 1953 that Edmund Hillary the New Zealander was anything but British,” she says, “but now that the Empire is no more, and even the United Kingdom has lost its appeal for many of us, isn’t it time we abandoned this equivocal epithet? You be English, I’ll be Welsh.”