Reporter's Diary

Press, 29 May 1980, Page 2

Reporter's Diary

Ao kidding! ANYONE visiting the Queen Elizabeth II Park swimming pool tomorrow and Saturday may find it hard to believe their eyes. About 120 players from throughout New Zealand will take to the water — to play hockey. Six-a-side, they will play for the New Zealand underwater hockey championship. No kidding. They wear snorkels, fins, and goggles, and run or swim along the bottom of the pool, hitting a lead puck with short hockey sticks. They have to hold their breath for as long as they can, and when they run out of air, they pop up to the surface for a breather and another team member goes down in their place. Although underwater hockey is a relative >. newcomer to New Zealand’s list of these will be the third annual national championships. The host this year is the Christchurch Subaqua Club. Tomorrow, the club games will be played, and the regional championships will be played off on Saturday morning. Throughout the two-day event, the games will be recorded by video-cameras at the underwater windows along the side of the pool. The films • will be shown live on a screen so that visitors can see for themselves that underwater hockey is no joke. Pub poetry FRENZIED punk rock music has been pushed out of an Auckland pub in favour of more tranquil poetry readings, at least on two nights a week. Instead of a deafening blast,

Monday and Tuesday night patrons of the Globe Tavern, in Auckland city, are being regaled with readings from Shakespeare, and poetry. New management at the pub, long frequented by university students and youthful trendies, decided they wanted to transform the image of the place. At the same time, a New Zealand poet, David Mitchell, was looking for a chance to read more in public. The result: Shakespeare on Monday nights and poetry readings on Tuesday, as from this week. Unknown poets will join in later. Nursery story AFTER reading yesterday’s item about the much-adored frog — one of the characters in a Theatrical Explosions play being performed at a kindergarten recently, who was kissed and hugged by all the children in the audience — one reader telephoned yesterday _ to remind us that “all little girls must kiss a certain number of toads before they find their handsome prince.” Under suspicion UPON finding he had locked his keys in his car, parked opposite the Central Police Station in Hereford Street, a reader told us yesterday, he went across the road to ask a policeman if;?. he would mind helping him break into his car so that he could drive home. After waiting at . the inquiries counter and not getting any assistance, the man went down the road to a building site and borrowed a piece of wire from the

workmen. He then wriggled the wire through the car window and fiddled about for a long time, trying to unlock the door. During this time, he said, several policemen, walked past and came in and out of the police station, and several passers-by looked askance at him. But nobody asked him what he was up to. Finally, he managed to unlock the door and was about to drive away when a young policeman came racing out of the station and blocked his path. Someone from a nearby office block had “spoken up.” The man then had to prove that the car was his. He told the policeman the whole story and asked why. nobody had come to his aid at the police station earlier. “We’re a bit rushed,” the policeman replied, and hurried back to work. Big spending THE NORTH Canterbury Hospital Board is spending an amazing $l9O a second, the treasurer (Mr Rex Harrison) told awed board members yesterday. “In fact, in the time it took Dr Fairgray to tell us what he has just told us, • Mr Harrison said (Dr Fairgray had been commenting on the board’s annual report), “we have spent $1500.” Time is money. Tooth,hurts? APROPOS Monday’s item about the New York dentist whose practice was on the “2th floor," an Eastern Terrace reader has written to tell us of an Ashburton dentist who has a small property on the outskirts of the towm At the gate of the small farm is a painted sign saying: “Tooth Acres.”

Julity