Reporter’s Diary

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34045, 8 January 1976, Page 3

Reporter’s Diary

Over the hurdle THAT rail round the Citizens' War Memorial in Cathedral Square is only a." qualified success so far. Because the new grass plot is open on the Cathedral side many people still set out on a short cut. only to find at the end of it that they must climb the fence as this photograph shows. Those who are less agile have been seen wandering along the inside of the rail looking for a way out. So far, the grass is standing the strain.

Self-help CONSUMER protection agencies would be a thing of the past if enough people defied the libel laws and were ready to help themselves, according to the Australian magazine, •■Quadrant.” In a discussion of the best and worst advertisements for 1975. ••Quadrant” rates very highly the exasperated riotorist in Sydney who placed a newspaper advertisement which began: “Crook Jaguar Club. If you have a Jag under two years did and it is costing you XlOO per month in trouble and two days per month Without a vehicle, you are eligible to join the Crook Jaguar Club.” The advertiser gave his telephone number. The results he got are said to have been quicker and more positive than anything anyone ever got from any consumer protection service.

Lyttelton old boy A FORMER pupil at Lyttelton Main School has recently completed his operational flying training with the Royal Navy in Britain and has qualified as a pilot flying elite Sea King helicopters at H.M.S. Osprey, the Navy’s air station at Portland, Dorset. He is Sub-Lieutenant Peter Rainey, aged 21, whose home now is in Glasgow where his mother, a former language teacher in Christchurch, is teaching.

On the water front TRANSPLANTED Liverpudlians and other television viewers who watched “The Onedin Line’’ for the last time last evening, may have wondered which Liverpool quays and warehouses were used for Captain James Onedin’s operations. The answer is: none. Most of the waterside scenes were filmed in Devon along the Exeter Canal. Exeter was a good choice for a series about ships and shipowners — it is the home of the Exeter Maritime Museum of Boats. The museum has more than 70 craft ashore or afloat, and could have supplied James Onedin with a Hong Kong sampan, a Welsh coracle, a Venetian gondola, an umla, a shahoof, and a guffa. And as a bonus everyone in the TV series could drink real ale from the wood in the museum’s pub — the Double Locks Hotel.

College fare BRITAIN’S economic plight has not stopped the young men at Cambridge from enjoying the good things of life. judging by the recipes supplied to a British travel magazine by the chefs at two colleges. The chef at Peterhouse, the oldest Cambridge college, offered his game pate recipe, which included hare, pheasant, chicken liver, ham. and mushrooms. Oxford, apparently, takes a more frugal line. The chef at Balliol offered Guards Pudding, described as very popular with the undergraduates. It has nothing more exotic than flour, butter, sugar, eggs, breadcrumbs, and raspberry jam. Tl by balloon TRAN is attempting to bring television reception to the whole country including mountainous terrain with scattered, nomadic populations. More than 150 transmitters have been installed, providing a service to about 65 per cent of the people. Now, to reach the most difficult pockets of countryside, balloons are being tethered about 12,000 feet up. Each carries a colour television transmitter, a radio transmitter, and a small generator powered by a Wankel engine. To service the new installation the Government has appealed for “a band of enthusiastic and adventurous engineers.” Broadcasters in New Zealand, please take note. Light in south BENEFITS of daylight saving become more marked the further south one goes. Visitors from Auckland have remarked that Christchurch seems to “stay light longer” in the evenings; visitors from Dunedin, which is further south and west than Christchurch, assure us that the days there seem to be even longer and more sunny than in Christchurch; and travellers from Invercargill give the impression that night there has all but been abolished. l\iue more years A CAR sticker reported to be selling well in Paris shows a muscular caveman dragging off a well-stacked cave lady (or cave person, perhaps) with a slogan which reads, in translation: “The end of International Women’s Year.” But a report from the United Nations suggests enthusiastic Frenchmen might be a little premature. Now, it seems, we are launched on an International Women’s Decade in which the lessons and findings of 1975 will be examined in more detail, right up until 1985.