Reporter's Diary

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34042, 5 January 1976, Page 2

Reporter's Diary

Costly cards

AFTER a Christmas in which it cost nearly a shilling to post a Christmas card in Britain, the Post Office there is counting up the losses and gains. The number of cards posted is reported to be down by nearly 20 per cent — with the result that the mails moved faster than they have at any Christmas for years, a gain for those prepared to pay to use the service. Even with the reduced postings, postage rates have increased so much that the Post Office is expected to have increased its Christmas revenue by 50 per cent. Bynext Christmas. New Zealanders will probably face the same sort of postal charges. House and home WHEN is a house not Just a home but an "executive habitat?” For some months a builder has been proclaiming on a comer in St Albans his intention to build luxurious. wellappointed "executive habitats" on the site. Now they are under construction, these "executive habitats” turn out to be rather ordinary ownership flats. It mav be that the builder, noticing al) the new flats around the city built but nor bought, is thinking he mav be able to attract customers who would not dream of buying just an ownership flat but would be very happy to settle into, and ask their friends to visit them in, their "executive hkbitat.”

Sinking cities

THERE is a cautionary tale for Christchurch in the fate Venice has just averted. Until a ban w-as imposed three years ago on pumping water from Venice’s artesian wells, the city was sinking about .106 inches a year. The ban has built up underground water pressure and reversed the sinking process. Christchurch Cathedral is no St Mark’s, but a word from the engineers about the effects of Christchurch’s drawing its water supplies from artesian sources under the city would be welcome to residents of Christchurch, even if the rest of the world is not greatly concerned about whether Christchurch and its cathedral might be sinking. Surpised dog

SOME light has been cast on the mystery of where the Afghan hound, w-hose early morning foraging for her master’s table was mentioned in this column last week, secures the daily loaf which she brings home each morning. The mother of the owner of the hound is assisting at present with running a church camp in a girl’s school near where the dog and her master live. The mother was up earlv one morning preparing breakfast for the campers when the dog appeared in the school kitchen. The dog was apparentlv startled at being told firmly by a strange woman, by name, to go home. She fled.

Year’s end FROM THE "Guardian.” London, in a final article to wind up International Women’s Year: "There was this little man sitting in the audience while learned persons discussed sexual matters. Came involvement time and the learned persons asked of the audience: hands up all those who have sex once a day? A lot of hands. Once every three days? A lot of hands. Once a week? A lot of hands. And so on until the final question, who has sex just once a year? Only the little man’s hand shot up, a great beam across his face, his whole bodv radiating joy and delight. But why, my poor man, said a teamed person, are you so much more cheerful than anyone else here when you only have sex once a year? Because, said the little man. quivering in ecstacy, tonight’s the night, “is this.” asked the "Guardian,” “the end of the affair?” Well named

NEW ZEALANDERS, especially those who frequent the mountains, often grieve that many of those who named the country’s natural features had little imagination and sometimes even less good taste. Future travellers in space should not have to bear a similar grievance against the astronomers and space scientists who. flooded with new close-up views of the planets, are making conscientious efforts to ensure that none of the names of the features recently discovered on other planets will be graceless or inappropriate. The choice of names for one planet pro-

vides another footnote to International Women’s Year. The features on Venus, now being mapped by radar from earth, are being named after famous women from mythology and history. Contemporary women are, fortunately, not eligible, otherwise a future astronaut might find himself toiling up Mount Germaine Greer or slogging across the Kate Millett Desert. Mao’s mountain TALKING of women and mountains, the Chinese claim that a largely Tibetan party, which included one woman, climbed Mount Everest by the North Ridge last May is now being accepted without question. Photographs printed last month in Britain prove beyond a doubt that a party of nine reached the summit. The tripod discovered on the summit by a British expedition in September is the same as the tripod which appears in the Chinese photographs. Scepticism is still widespread about the Chinese claim that a Chinese party climbed the mountain by the North Ridge in the 19605, but only blind anticommunism could now explain a refusal to accept the Chinese success of last year. The climb was made without the continuous oxvgen supplies on which other expeditions have relied. The summit party of nine w as the largest ever to reach the too and the 37-vear-old Tibetan woman included in it failed bv only two weeks to be the first woman to climb Mount Everest. The woman who beat her was the Japanese mountaineer. Mrs Junko Tabei.