Reporter's Diary
Southern pride A SUGGESTION by Pro- ■ fgssor J. F* Duncan, cnair- -' man of the Commission for. the Future, that separatist Government might be possible in New Zealand . .has prompted -a reader o ' respond that not only > might it be possible, it nas . '."already begun! In a report ; in “The Press,” of February 12, Professor Duncan said-that the South Island /. 'should adopt a self-suffi r ciency philosophy in fields such as food, clothing, and education. Our reader says that the South
Movement is already working towards separatism, and/to’ this end, the movement has issued an ; emblem, in the form of a sticker (pictured), showing the Southern Cross, and the Southern Alps. Revenge! NO S E L F-respecting . pooch, ;it . seems,, likes being shut up inside the family' tar' bya bunch of <• kids and then-.-.-forgotten about. One Christchurch dog that found himself in this situation decided' to make the'most of it and get his - own back. He had been put inside the family car and, since he managed to then lock the door," the children were unable to get him out again. There was nothing they or their ■ mother could do about it until father got home from the office with the car keys; In the meantime, the dog got his revenge. He chewed his way through the seat belts, one of the door linings, and part of a seat cover. He then turned on all the car
lights. When father finally got home,, there was his brand-new car with a flat battery and' half wrecked inside. / “Gats&y” days “ZELDA,” a play featuring such literary characters as F. Scott Fitzgerald, his wife, Zelda Sayre, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, and Gertrude Stein will be the University of Canterbury Drama Society’s Orien tat i on production. Directed by Judy Cleine, the play will begin on February 29 at the Ngaio Marsh Theatre.. Rehearsals are under way;, but the wardrobe mistress has encountered a slight prob-, lem. She'-has so‘far been unable -to find a white man’s suit, consistent with the style worn in the “Roaring Twenties,” the era of “The Great Gatsby,” Fitzgerald’s famous novel-. The actor plaving Fitzgerald is s of medium height and slim build. The drama society would like to bear from anyone who would lend such a suit, for the duration of the production. War relic IN 1914, a soldier from
New Zealand named F. A. Smith stamped his mark on a British penny. The penny, dated 1914, is also stamped with his number, C.E. 39609. A reader, who lives at Holly Lea, in Fendalton, brought the old copper into “The Press” yesterdav. It was of no use to her, she said, and she would like to give it to the man, or his relatives. She had had it for years, but could not remember how she came by it. “But if Mr Smith or his family would like to have it, I would be only too happy to give it to them,” she said. Half price WITH the cost of petrol per litre going up and up, and the resulting strain placed upon petrol pumps, surely it would be a good idea to set every petrol pump at half the cost per litre, rather than the full price, a reader suggests, “The mechanism would then be saved the risk of breaking down and the attendant would then merely double the price shown,” he says. In the United States, such a practice has already been adopted, because petrol
pumps there cannot go any higher than 99c per gallon. There is only room for two digits on the gauge, and petrol surpassed 99c a gallon there several months ago. Down with gravity SPOOF political parties come and go. Some, it could be argued, even get into power. But Canada’s Rhinoceros Party has proved more durable than most. Founded almost 20 years ago, it is putting up 121 candidates at the forthcoming election after an encouraging result last time round. The high spot -of the Rhino’s manifesto is a pledge to abolish the law of gravity, and one candidate is campaigning for the abolition of metrics. “If God had wanted us to go metric,” he says, “He would not have given us 12 Apostles.” His critics hasten to point out that God gave us 10 fingers before Apostles. Tweety-pies A RECENT item about the most popular British names for children in 1979 has prompted a reader to
draw attention to what she regards as a bad American habit of adding “twee” comments to the ordinarily simple announcements of birth, sex, and name. When she was overseas last year, she said, she collected several such additions: “A son to sort out Nichola and Emma ... A son —, a partner in crime for ... A sparring partner for ... A nuisance for . . . First child to a very clever mother ... A fourth for bridge ... A co-pilot for , . , Another member of the. wrecking brigade . . . That’s my boy!” Invisible? A SMALL wooden box with a glass front is attached to the wall beside the lift door on the seventh floor of the new part of the State Insurance building in Worcester Street. The box, which is boldly labelled “Civil Defence,” is empty, save for a piece of paper, on which some .wag has written: “This box is not empty; it’s just full of Civil Defence equipment.”
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