Reporter's Diary

Press, 8 November 1978, Page 2

Reporter's Diary

Jrniy’n plate -THE ARMY reports that the commemorative plate (above) produced to mark the opening of the new museum at Waiouru is selling well. Two thousand consecutively numbered plates were produced with a design showing the new museum building and the badges of al! the Army' corps. Plate No. 1 has been presented to the Queen and orders for plates have been received from London, Moscow, Washington, and Singapore. So far Army' Headquarters in Wellington has sold 1000 plates in New Zealand and about four a day are being sold to visitors to the museum. The price is S3O and the Army hopes to raise $36,000 for

the museum. Plates can be ordered from: the Treasurj er, Army Museum Trust

Board, Home Command, Private Bag, Wellington.

Trained for it

“AH, from New Zealand?” said a German whom Mr V. F. Wilkinson of Christchurch met on a visit to Heidelberg. “You speak very good English!”—The traveller enjoyed the compliment. Before he retired from teaching, he was head of the English department at Christchurch Boys’ High School. School missing THE SAME man recently wrote to a colleague in Auckland, • addressing his envelope “H.O.D. English, Auckland Alternative School, Maori Community Centre, Fanshawe Street, Auckland.” He was astonished to learn that the Post Office has lost the school. His letter came back stamped “Gone, no address.”

Top ten 'ANYONE asked which pictures were the biggest attractions at Britain’s National Gallery would probablv suggest the great Old Masters. But, on one index of popularity —the sale of postcards at the gallery’s shop — only Leonardo da Vinci makes any great showing, and then not for a painting. From the day' it was acquired the Leonardo cartoon, “Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St John,” has been easily the best-selling postcard at the gallery. It sells about. 24,000 postcards a year. But the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists as a group provide the most popular works al the gallery — that is, if the enthusiasm of visitors for a picture can be gauged by their purchase of a postcard afterwards. After Leonardo’s cartoon, the next most popular painting is Monet’s “The Water Lily Pond,” selling up to 20,000 a year, and the same painter’s “Thames Below Westminster,” which sells almost as many. The others in the top 10 are Van Gogh’s “Cornfield.” Renoir’s “Parapluies,” Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers,” Van Eyck’s “The Marriage of Jan Arnolfini,” Seurat’s “Baignade Asnieres,” Constable’s “The Hay Wain,” and Renoir s “La Premiere Sortie.” Mileage marathon A NEW’ world record was set recently at the ShellMotor Mileage Marathon in the United Kingdom, when a petrol-powered vehicle managed to achieve a magnificent 1643 miles per gallon. The vehicle, from the British engine development company Rt«

cardo, made use of a sophisticated fuel -control system, including fuel injection, into its Honda 90 engine. A special guest appearance at the contest was a diesel vehicle, from Mercedes Benz which although it was not eligible to compete, achieved 1819 m.p.g. on a demonstration run. Descriptions given by the organisers of some of the weird and wonderful vehicles taking part included “a space-age toothpast tube,” a “mobile hypodermic,” and a “cross between a bumble bee and a ladybird.” Nautical

APROPOS the items in the “Diary” recently about convenient hotel doors, a reader reports that he saw two intriguing signs in the Careys Bay Hotel, across the road from the fish-* erman’s wharf in Otago Harbour. Everything in the hotel is appropriately nautical, he says, and the toilet doors are marked “Gulls” and “Buoys.” Aot yet IT IS tomorrow that the Society for the Intellectually Handicapped needs helpers to sell Christmas cards in Cathedral Square, not today as was mistakenly stated in yesterday’s “Diary.” Volunteers should telephone Mrs Barbara Allardyce at 325-293. Safety measures A QUESTION in a test set at an intermediate school: “Why does a surgeon wear a mask when he performs an operation?” One bright 12-year-old wrote: “So if he makes a mess of it, the patient won’t know who did it.” , —Felicity Price