Reporter's Dairy

Press, 28 November 1979, Page 2

Reporter's Dairy

Carpet hues CARPET-EATING bugs and the Wool Board are anathema to each other, but even so, the Wool Board is desperate to get hold of some. Television One’s consumer affairs programme, “Fair Go,”

demonstrated recently that woollen carpet is not proof against the larvae of the brown house moth, in spite of mothproofing claims made by carpet wearing the Woolmark. This has concerned the Wool Board deeply, and it

has now excluded the brown house moth from its claims. Naturally it wants to recover that lost ground, so it is appealing to carpet owners to send in as many as they can find of the half-inch long, white-bodied, brown-head-ed larvae. It wants to test some new chemicals on them, developed by scientists at the International Wool Secretariat in Britain. New Zealand’s mild, wet winter has proved most acceptable to the bugs, which have been unobtainable in Britain. Send any unwanted larvae to the Wool Board, Private Bag, Wellington, together with a little wheat

ONE OF Canterbury’s most eminent painters will be honoured by the Canterbury Society of Arts at its annual meeting this evening. Mr W. A. (Bill) Sutton, who will retire this year from the position of reader in fine arts at the University of Canterburv School of Fine Arts, will be presented with the C.S.A. medal. Only 10 others have re-

. ceived the medal, which goes to Mr Sutton for his outstanding achievements as a portrait and landscape painter, and his dedicated service to the administration of the arts. He is a former member of the C.S.A. council. Probably nervous HEAVY breathing by hundreds of mice fogged the windscreen of a van and caused an accident, a court in Arlingsaas, Sweden, has been told. The driver said he was taking the mice to a Gothenburg hospital for use in experiments when their breath clouded the windscreen. He reached for a rag to wipe it, and the van plunged off the road. The court fined him 15 days pay. False alarm HAVE YOU heard the story of the town that bought a new fire engine and held a public meeting to decide what to do with the old one? After a long discussion, it was agreed not to sell it but to keep it for answering false alarms. Technology wins SO MUCH for the superioritv of traditional hand craftsmanship. Mr Fred Goodman, director of a British firm which makes canoes, is off to Baffin Island at the invitation of the Canadian Government to fell the Eskimos how to build kayaks. He says that modem glassfibre technioues produce better craft than those tradit:onallv made by Eskimos. As well as being a canoe designer, Mr Goodman

was a member of the British kayak team which rounded Cape Horn two years ago. Atheist enterprise RUSSIA, officially an atheist state, is trying to flood Britain with religious Christmas cards at cutrate prices. British card manufacturers are miffed.' The Russians were about, to launch an invasion of about 100 M Christmas cards 10 times cheaper than British-made -cards. The manufacturers are afraid they may !o=e 10 ner cent of the market, and they are trying to dissuade Britons from buving the imported cards. “The public is duped, because thev do not know the cards are made in a countrv that has reiected Christ and the Church and persecuted Christians.” said Mr Jim Galbraith, president of the Association of Greeting Cards Manufacturers. Chronic case. AUCKLAND Citv Council officers scored a hat-trick during their three-dav blitz on drinkin" drivers. They caught the same man three nights in succession and each time charged him with drinking and driving. The blitz began last Thursdaw It was Friday evening when they first stonned him. He was anprehended again on Saturdav and, after the blitz was over, on Sunday. Btimner thought A READER r<morts seeing th ; s s'gn on the hack of a car the other dav: “Tnsanitv is hereditary. You get it from your kids.”