Reporter's Diary

Press, 11 May 1979, Page 2

Reporter's Diary

Pipped A JURY this week awarded SUS3O,OOO in damages to a woman who claimed she had been improperly arrested for eat-, ing an apple on Washington’s underground rail system, Metro. Victoria Churchville, aged 28, a Washington journalist, testified that she took two bites of her apple on the train and was warned by a Metro policeman that eating on the train was illegal. Her lawyer contended that she was not arrested until after she had left the train, and that there was. no law against eating on the platform.

Victim WEDNESDAY’S bus strike was said to have had little effect on holiday activities in Christchurch. This might not have impressed the elderly, very little lady waiting at the Sumner terminus for transport. She told an inquirer that she had to get a bus because she was going into hospital for treatment.

Plain facts THE RICCARTON Borough has a district planning scheme, a voluminous document. In it there is a section headed “Riccarton Road shopping proposal.” Two paragraphs down it makes the following announcement: “The shopping centre will (a) grow, or (b) stay as it is,

or (c) decline. Other days FERRYMEAD NOW has a tobacconist’s shop in its museum complex, complete with an authentic old-style barber’s chair, old razors, and tobacco tins. Gifts of old pipes, advertising material, tins, or a picture of a -famous prize-fighter would be welcomed. A recent gift was a poster lamenting a tobacco shortage and ad-

vertising a protest meeting to be held at the Hi-> bemian Hall, Barbadoes street The advertised speaker was Fred Sibley, secretary of the Lyttelton branch of the Democratic Labour Party. Readers are asked to help Ferrymead by identifying the year the poster was printed. Absence makes ... ROUGH WEATHER in Foveaux Strait kept the oys t e r boats moored recently. A Christchurch connoisseur, desperately eager for his favourite delicacy, kept telephoning his fishmonger during this drought, hoping day by day for good news. He finally asked the shopkeeper if he had just a photograph of an oyster, so that he could look at it. His unspoken prayer was answered yesterday: he was able to buy a supply of oysters. Rivalry STATEMENTS THAT Christchurch has the worst drivers in New Zealand are supported by a correspondent who further said that the worst traffic in Christchurch is that coming down Memorial Avenue and Fendalton Road before working hours. “Day after day” he says “I break the law, by just a bit, coasting along about 55 km/h. But day aftei\day, cars roar past,

swing in front, then have to brake, and you sit there behind the same fellow all the way into town. I should be doing 50 km/h, not 55, but I feel faultless compared with the rudest, crudest lot I have ever seen. There seems to be no thought of petrol conservation, or regard for the speed limits.” No correspondence will be entered into regarding claims for other districts. Green light YESTERDAY’S feature article which suggested that at new moon and full moon acts of violence were especially prevalent, prompted a veteran reader to tell us of fanning practice in his youth. He said that after a pig had been fattened and killed, it had to be covered in the evening, because the moonlight would make it go green. Example IN WRITTEN submissions to the New South Wales House of Representatives Standing Committee on Road Safety, this appeared: “Accident causation is multifarious . . The submissions came from the Director-General of Education. Finality SEEN IN the window of an office in Cambridge, England: “Bikes left here will be recycled.”