Reporter's Diary

Press, 26 April 1978, Page 2

Reporter's Diary

Unstoppable WHEN the siren goes for the New Brighton Volunteer Fire Brigade, you could not stop one of those volunteers with a brick wall. One of the part-time firemen proved it on Friday evening. An alarm sounded at 8.45 p.m„ and the volunteer immediately leapt into his car and headed for the station in Hawke Street. The fastest way is the best way when there is a fire to be dealt with, so he took his usual shortcut across the New Brighton central School which lies between Seaview Road and the fire station. But he had not reckoned with the uncommon slipperiness of the grass. His car skidded into a brick wall on the other side of the grounds, and disappeared under a shower of bricks and mortar. It is reported that the fireman stepped out with the utmost aplomb, jumped on to the fire engine on the other side of the street, and tore off to the fire. Later he was seen trying to push his unfortunate car out of the rubble. Shaky IF SOMEBODY does not rescue the old Theatre Royal soon there may be nothing left. At the last performance of the Christchurch Operatic Society's presentation of “The Merry Widow,” the vigour of the dancing started to shake things loose. A chunk of wood suddenly landed on the stage from a great height — fortunately during a pause when the stage was clear — and at another point the little side railing round the orchestra pit broke off. Meal t hr own in “NO, T’LL JUST grab a bite at work.” says Elizabeth Moody these days, as she dashes off unfed to The Court Theatre. She has a leading role in “Days in the Trees.” It is not a very pleasant bit of characterisation — she portrays a glutton — but it does provide her with a square

meal. Every evening on stage Elizabeth Moody devours a vast heap of food, sauerkraut, peas, peach melba, chocolate gateau, and is allowed to talk with her mouth full. Keith Tait, the floor manager, prepares the food for each performance, and uses a French recipe to make the “shoucroute.” Apart from the sameness of the diet, which will go on unchanged for 21 performances, her main objection is to the peach melba. She hates the stuff, but has to force down one and a half servings at every performance. Price escalation A FEW Saturdays ago, Rodney Bryant saw an advertisement for bricks from a demolition site at $2O a truckload. He wants to lay a brick path, and so he placed an order by telephone. The vendors were the TWA-MACS demolition people, who are pulling down the old High Street Chambers. They said they would call him when the bricks were available. But when they telephoned last week, they said there had been so many inquiries that there were not enough truckloads to go around — and they had doubled the price. He cancelled his order, but he is still sore about the price rise. Mr Malcolm McDonald, one of the twa Macs, said during a pause in demolition that the reason for doubling the price was not so much the demand for bricks as the time and cost of extracting them from the building with machinery that cost $BO an hour to run. As far as he was concerned he would just as soon dump the lot. Safe at sea? UNWANTED medicines and pills should be flushed safely out of the way down the lavatory, says a Health Department advertisement designed to help prevent nasty accidents. But is that the safe place for them, one reader wants to know. “No matter how diluted they be-

come,” he writes, “it still does not seem acceptable to me to have them pumped into the sea. They could almost as easily be

returned to a chemist who could deal with them in a better way.” Dr L. F. Jepson, the Christchurch Medical Officer of Health, says there is no cause for alarm. The department looked into the whole matter, and was sure there was no danger of any pollution from medicines disposed of in this way. Culture sale A LONDON banker who wishes to remain anonymous bought Gypsy Rose Lee’s mink G-string for $5OO at a New York auction, but many of the late,- great stripper’s working clothes went to

present-day practitioners of the art. The clothing worn and shed by Miss Lee on stage, as well as expensive offstage gowns, pink satin underwear, and even her furniture, were sold in spirited bidding at the Plaza Art Galleries. Dr Ferruccio Dicori, who bought Gypsy’s East 63rd Street townhouse after her death from cancer in 1970, paid $275 for one of her most spectacular headdresses, the one with the birds and love letters that she wore in “Belle of the Yukon.” The anonymous London banker, bidding by telephone, also paid $14,500 for a Dior mon-key-fur coat. Bianca Benedict Bartzvi, a former “Miss Israel,” paid $l6OO for an evening wrap of alternating bands of fox and beaded chiffon. But the happiest bidders were the “artistes” who got mementoes of Miss Lee that they can use in their acts. One budding stripper said: “This is preserving a little culture, you know. They should be worn.” Miscalculated? THE RAZOR manufacturers have more to worry about than we imagined. They hope that consumers will throw away their hrthrowaway shavers after just one week, but Mr Tony Davey, a Rangiora turner who knows a good edge when he sees one, has just thrown away a disposable razor after no less than three months of close shaving. —Garry Arthur