Reporter's Diary

Press, 17 June 1980, Page 2

Reporter's Diary

What a gas! IF YOU live in the Avon Loop and are thinking of switching from gas to electricity — don’t, says an intriguing paragraph in the latest issue of “Loopie News.” “Well, not yet, anyway,” it adds. “Coal gas supplies are likely to be discontinued by March, 1982, at the latest. However, an alternative is being investigated for the Avon Loop, which would mean you will be able to use your existing gas appliances with only slight modification.” The item does not enlighten the reader further, but rumour has it that some of the Loopies are looking at the possibility of having a methane digester in the area, which, to put it politely, would transform sewage and other animal and vegetable waste, into useable methane gas. Rumour also has it that methane digesters are not nasally nice to be near. Tico left feet

ONE OF Christchurch’s many jogging fanatics was quick off the mark yesterday to get into Suckling’s shoe store sale to buy himself a couple of pairs of road shoes advertised as being considerably reduced in price. Naturally,

he was delighted with himself, cutting a swathe through the crowded store, and picking up his bargain. But when he got home and put one of the pairs of shoes on to go for his daily run, he was not so pleased after all. He had two for left -feet — one a nine arid the other, a nine-and-a-half. If anyone has discovered they have bought two right feet in corresponding sizes, he would be grateful if they could telephone Suckling’s (63-639) or take the shoes back there so that he can have the right shoe, as it were, and they can pick'up his extra left shoe, to complete the pair. Memories

THURSDAY’S feature article about Harry Leaman, the one-legged ferryman who plied the Waiau River between 1903 and 1911, has stirred memories for Mr James Smith, who knew Mr Leaman after he finished his ferrying. duties. About 50 years ago, while working on a farm “just the other side of the Hurupui bridge, beyond the Greta,” Mr Smith first met Harry Leaman, who was at that time running a carrying business between Christ- 1 church and Cheviot. “Nothing was a trouble to

him,” he says. “If you wanted a pair of patjts, or a Mg of potatoes, or "even a dozen cakes, all you had to do was leave a white flag up on your mail box and Harry would get your order in town. He was an old man, yet his agility was something to marvel at. One has to remember that the roads were shingle then and the trucks had hard seats and no heating in the cabs. Those of us who are left, feel very . privileged to have known him.”

Winter pruning

A PUBLIC demonstration of how to prune fruit trees and bushes will be given by Mr’ Frank Sissons at Holly Lea, 123 Fendalton Road, at 9 a.m. on Saturday. The annual demonstration, which is free of. charge, is organised by the Canterbury Horticultural Society, and includes advice on how to prune all types of fruit trees, including berry, stone and pip fruits. Those attending the demonstration are asked to leave their cars on Fendalton Road.

Fanfare PROFESSOR John Ritchie, head of the music department at the University of Canterbury, has composed many fanfares for special occasions — most notably the fanfare for the Commonwealth Games in Christchurch. But his most recent fanfare, called

“Swordfish,” gave him more pleasure than usual because of ijs- asso'ejation with the past. It was commissioned for the dedication of a rebuilt Swordfish aircraft, used by. the Fleet Air Arm during World War 11, at the opening of the new Fleet Air Arm Museum in Auckland at Queen’s Birthday Weekend. Professor Ritchie, who served as a pilot in this branch of the Navy, did not fly this type of aircraft, but recalls the admiration held for it early in the war. The fanfare 7 was scored for the Royal New Zealand Navy Band and, according to Professor Ritchie, it “is a brief encapsulation of the 1940 Taranto raid — one of the remarkable Fleet Air Arm actions in which an almost obsolete aircraft inflicted heavy losses on the Italian; Navy.’’

Coshiic teddies

RUSSIAN cosmonauts, meandering through the heavens aboard the Salyut 6 space station, are not wasting their time. They have been engaged in moulding plastic models of Mishka Bear, the Moscow Olympic symbol. But the Soviet Union does not take kindly to ribald remarks about this activity. It is, the Russians say, “a serious attempt to see how plastic behaves in zero gravity.”