Reporter's Diary

Press, 16 January 1980, Page 2

Reporter's Diary

How many headaches? BULK WINE carriers, such as the one shown in the photograph, are filled to the brim with Blenhiem wine and each week journev from Malborough vinevards to the Montana bottling plant at Tamaki. Our Blenheim reporter went to look at them this week and found nine bulk wine tankers, owned bv the Railways, being filled

with the heady liquid. He denies stationing himself underneath the inlet pipe but he did spot an impromptu sign painted on the side of one of the tankers waiting to be filled. It read: “Chateau Blotto.” Each tanker takes 9000 litres of wine, which would fill about 12,000 standard bottles, or 72,000 glasses. How many headaches, one wonders, could that cause?

Cock-a-doodle-doo SOME PEOPLE actually like the sound of roosters crowing, writes a reader after seeing yesterday’s front page report, about roosters disturbing the peace. "The early morning crowing of roosters is music, to my ears,” our reader writes. “It is easier to listen to than the sound of a stereo going full blast all night or the tooting of car horns and banging of car doors.” He suggests ear plugs for those who can’t stand the sound of what he calls “Nature’s music.” Partners in crime IN JUNE, Stockholm will be host to the Crime Writers’ Third International Congress. It is being arranged by the Swedish Academy of Detection and will be held for a week from June 14. Included on the programme will be how to write crime stories for radio, the cinema, and television; ■ crime writers as a mirror and moulder of society and its development; trade questions such as contracts, negotiations, guarantees, and royalties; and soecial-study visits, panel discussions and programmes. Leading authors from throughout the world have been invited. The organisers are also inviting critics, researchers, and sociologists, and representatives from television, cinema, theatre, magazines, and newspapers. In the dark A COMMERCIAL photographer from Christchurch was visiting a farm near Oxford to take a picture of a nrize Poll Dorset ram. While he was there, he persuaded the farmer’s two young sons to have their pictures taken with

the ram. “You’ll appreciate that in 40 years time,” the photographer said to Jason, the younger of the two, “Gosh,” replied Jason in awe. “Do pictures take that long to develop?” Removing the sting THE RECENT plague of bluebottles at Christchurch beaches has prompted a reader to bring in an antidote, recently marketed in Australia. Called Stingose, it is being produced by a South Australian firm. It is sprayed on the skin to neutralise the painful stings of bluebottles and jellyfish, as well as mosquitoes, sandflies, wasps and bees. The product was developed by a Queensland chemist after 20 years research and will soon be released on the world market, according to an article in an Australian newspaper. Our reader says he has not had cause to use his little bottle of Stingose yet but, he says, it’s nice to know it’s there just in case. Undervalued AS THE price of gold continues to rise, spare a thought for Tiffany’s, the New York jewellers, who are designing the winners’ medals for the Winter. Olympic Games, to be held at Lake Placid, New York, next month. The company’s original bid in 1978 assumed gold at SlBO an ounce and silver at $5 an ounce. Happily, the medals are not solid metal. Friendly warning BUS terminals in the United States display signs that, to the uninitiated. seem contradictory.. The signs warn travellers: “Beware of friendly strangers.” But the warning is not an idle one. It refers to the deceptively

friendly approaches made to lonely-looking travellers by members of the Moonie cult, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Churchy Young New Zealanders travelling through the United States are said to be particularly susceptible to approaches from such “friendly strangers.” Easy does it! ROTARY International in Papua New Guinea is running a campaign to promote road safety and, to this end, car stickers proclaiming the purpose of the campaign have been circularised. A Christchurch businessman, recently returned from a trip to Papua New Guinea, noticed some of the signs, written in Pidgin English, and found it took a while to work out some of the messages. One, which he brought home with him, says: “Draiv isL Rotari Klap bilong Lae.” It isn’t until you actually say it out loud that you get the message: “Drive easy. Rotary Club of Lae.” Chemical warfare CONVOLVULUS and uncontrollable clumps of bamboo have got the better of the organicallyminded residents of the Avon Loop. According to the latest edition of “Loopie News,” the Loopies have decided to wage chemical warfare on the bamboo and convolvulus running rampant around the community cottage at 26 Hurley Street. “We agree it would be preferable to control the weeds organically (that is, dig them out),” the newsletter says, “but it seems that not enough people can give their time to do this.” So inorganic means will have to be used to clear the weeds.