Reporter's Diary

Press, 15 June 1978, Page 2

Reporter's Diary

Stationary voyage PETER Sinclair, a Christchurch storeman, plans to spend a week in the middle of winter camping on a raft in the middle of Victoria Lake. It is one of the many schemes now getting under way to support South Pacific Television’s Telethon appeal for sufferers of rheumatism and arthritis. Mr Sinclair hopes he won’t contract rheumatism himself during his watery vigil, which begins on June 25. The raft will have a little hut on top, where he will live. He will have a kerosene stove for cooking such nautical tucker as bully beef, and says he will leave the raft only if it catches fire or starts to sink. To while away the time, he plans to do research for a planned book about much larger craft — the inter-islana ferry service. Children of the Rowley School are raising sponsorship money for the raft project. Best place IF YOU expect to fall over and take a chunk out of your leg, make sure it happens on the steps of the North Canterbury Hospital Board’s offices. A reporter did that yesterday. He tripped on the step, gashing a leg in the process, and fell into the arms of Mr Bill Utley, a hospital board member and urologist. He steered the injured man into a wheelchair which was parked inside the door, and Dr Ross Fairgray, medical superintendent of the Christchurch Hospital, telephoned the accident and emergency department. When the orderly arrived, one of the office staff admonished him: “See that he gets there straight away — he’s on the board.” It was not quite true; and our man hopes he would have got his two stitches just as expeditiously without the board’s endorsement. Briefing “OTHELLO,” Shakespeare’s tragic love story set in Venice and Cyprus, opens at the Court Theatre next week, but before it does so theatregoers will be able to learn a lot about the play and its production at a forum to be held at the theatre on Sunday afternoon. Alan Grant will chair a discussion which will be started by Dr Richard Corballis, lecturer in drama at Canterbury University. He will approach the play from a literary standpoint, and then the play’s director, Elric Hooper, will discuss it from the producer’s or director’s point of view. The idea is to help people get more out of the play, which is described as one “for the man in the street.” Ao women's talk WITTY, fascinating, even spell-binding — at least some of the 73 men at McMurdo Station, the American Antarctic base, must fit into those categories. But that is not enough to keep Miss Sue Williams interested throughout the winter. A scientist from the University of Texas she is the onlv woman in the winter partv. Although she has all those men to talk to — plus the 11 at the NewZealand station. Scott Base, where she went for dinner recently — it is reported that she is missing feminine conversation. Miss Williams is the fourth American woman to winter at McMurdo Station. Her predecessor last winter. Mrs Donna Oliver, had her husband to

talk to, and the women who first wintered at McMurdo in 1975, Dr Mary McWhinnie and Sister Mary Odile Cahoon, could chat to each other. Odd meeting CHRISTCHURCH has two Mrs M. Selmans, but they had never met until this week. Mrs Mabel Selman went to the orthopaedic outpatients’ department at the Christchurch Hospital and sat in the waiting room until her name was called. But when the receptionist called “Mrs Selman,” two of them got up. “The one I want is Mrs M. Selman,” chuckled the receptionist. Both took a pace forward. The other Mrs Selman’s first name is Marion. “I’ve never seen her before in my life,” said an astonished Mrs Mabel Selman. “There are only two Mrs Selmans in Christchurch, and I wonder what the odds are against us both having appointments at the ortho* paedic department at the same time. The only thing we did not have in common was our injuries.” Mrs Mabel Selman said they were not related, as far as she knew, but “we might go into the genetics and find out." Stung INVENTORS of the University of Canterbury’s experimental electric car took to heart a remark by the Minister of Energy (Mr Gair) that the car still suffered problems with acceleration and hillclimbing. Dr Richard Harman and Mr David Byers set out in the car for the summit of Dyers Pass — a one-in-seven climb — to prove him wrong. Mr Byers said the car readily negotiated the climb, and a picture of the vehicle at the Sign of the Kiwi has been published as evidence in the university “Chronicle.” As for acceleration, said Mr Byers, the electric car could reach 50km/h in less than 15 seconds. The car is now in Dunedin, where the Electricity Department is investigating its potential for use in taibrace tunnels and other areas where exhaust fumes are a problem. Humbled OUR team at the scene Of the burnt-out Tongan ship’s beaching at Purau this week was more than usually conscious of the more lavish resources of television. While the television cameramen whirred luxuriously overhead in a helicopter, our reporter and photographer laboriously rowed towards the wreck in a borrowed Bft dinghy. They had started out from Purau under power, but finding themselves at the wreck half-an-hour early, they puttered off to Ripapa Island just to fill in time. That little trip squandered all their petrol and they had to man the oars for the return journey — much to the amusement of the firemen who were by this time leaning over the ship’s rails and splitting their sides at our. chaps’ expense. Keeping warm IF YOU draw the curtains across the windows at night, you can reduce heat loss from the room by 30 per cent. This finding was made by Dr J. B. Stott, of the University of Canter* bury’s Energy Conservation Committee, who has been investigating heat losses from open outside doors and uncurtained windows at night. His other major finding is that one open door on a cold morning was losing 45kw in warm air moving out of the building. —Garry Arthur