Reporter's Diary

Press, 4 September 1980, Page 2

Reporter's Diary

Drums and bells... CATHEDRAL Square certainly comes alive at lunchtime these days. In yesterday’s warm sunshine, the Wizard, and the Bible Lady continued to battle -it out, .with occasional interruptions • from other soapbox orators of the I religious kind... Only a few metres away, the strangely clad Hare Krishna, followers stared dreamily into space, while chanting, tinkling their bells, and beating their drums. But unlike the other occupants of Speakers’ Comer, they did not shut up shop and go home at 2 p.m. Their' music, if you can call it that, droned on" and on well into the afternoon. .... but is it music? SHOULD the Hare Krishna followers have a busking licence or are they just part of the general hubbub of Speakers’ Comer? According to the Christchurch City Council’s expert on the happenings in the Square, Julie Sadler, the sects’ followers are classed as street musicians “to be kind to them." They are allowed to chant away to their heart's content, so long as they do not ask for money or try to sell people anything. If they did, they would need a busking licence. There

is a quaint by-law, says. Mrs Sadler, which states that people are allowed to play musical instruments or sing in the street but that. they must stop if somebody asks them to; Friends, initially IN THESE • liberal times the need for a word to describe a person living with another of the opposite sex without having tied the proverbial knot has become quite pressing. The word “de facto” has filled the gan in the meantime but few have found it comfortable, with its legal-sounding overtones and its slightly, unfavourable connotations. Yet, on the other hand, such words as “boyfriend,” “lover,” "flatmate,” “fiancee,” or “close friend!’ have somehow seemed inadequate to describe that state of semi-matrimony that has become so common. Therefore,'it is with great pleasure that we announcetfie new word “posselcue.” 1t,,, has been officially adopted for the California state census for which a term was sought that was more , impersonal than wife, boyfriend, or lover. Out of the depths of the bureaucratic mind sprang, full-grown, the posselcue: “Person of the Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters” (or POSSLQ.).

Trishaw marathon NEWior ZEALAND manpower&will combine with Singaporean ingenuity in November when more than. 240 riders will take turns on a trishaw to try to establish a world record for the longest trishaw trip. Known as the Great Trishaw Marathon, it is being organised by Singapore Airlines, the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board, and the New Zealand Round Tables to raise money for the New Zealand Blood Foundation for' ~ research into blood diseases. The Round Tables will supply the pedal power for the marathon: more than 240 riders will pedal two trishaws' in separate expeditions in the North and South Island both beginning on November 5. The teams plan to meet in Wellington on November 14 after having covered 2000 km. Soothing effect THE incident on the Southerner last Friday when the police : boarded the train at Rakaia to keep an eye on two teams of football players 'who were upsetting the passengers has reminded a reader of a similar incident many years ago. It was in the early 19205, he said, and his mother was travelling on the train to the West Coast. On the same train was a group of new immigrants to New Zealand who were .travel-

ling to the Coast to become miners. “They had got themselves a bit inebriated and some of them became/ obnoxious,” he said. “I remember my mother telling me how the Railway staff coped with it. They didn’t need the police. The guard stopped the train at Staircase and told the miners to get out and walk. And, as everyone 'knows, Staircase is not the nicest place to have to walk through. The miners started to argue but then 1 the driver and the fireman turned up with two burning 'hot things from the firebox. That calmed the miners down all right. They went quietly all the way over to the Coast from then on.” A greater age MATHEMATICS was never dur forte. Our calculations and those of the. McSherry family, mentioned in items on Tuesday and Wednesday, were out by about 200 years. The combined ages, ,we said, of the 10 members of the McSherry family at their family reunion recently was 524 years. But since all 10 brothers and sisters were in their 60s, 70s, and 80s such a figure was, as several readers pointed out yesterday, clearly too low. The combined ages of the 10 surviving McSherry “children” is more likely to be 724, which is.,, also much more impressive.