Reporter's Diary

Press, 6 September 1980, Page 2

Reporter's Diary

Spring cycle SINCE last years trip to Spencer Park was such a great success, the Canterbury Cycle Association has -decided to hold another “Spring Cycle,” this, time to Corsair Bay. The public are invited to join, members of the association on Sunday, leaving Latimer Square at 10.30 a.m. or outside Ferrymead Historic Park. at 11 a.m. From there, all will, cycle throughthe Lyttelton Road ,-Tujjtiel, to Corsair Bay, where. they will have a picnic lunch, and. return through • the; tunnel again at 2.30 -p.m. Special permission has been received from the National Roads Board-to cycle through the tunnel. The- association says its'main reasons for what is now becoming an annual event is to celebrate the arrival of spring, to encourage summer cycl-: ists, and-to..- encourage commuter ’ r cyclists... to enjoy recreational cycling. Wildcat strike

ROCKHAMPTON, in. cen-. tral Queensland, js pulling

the mat from under the cat. The council has passed an ordinance making it compulsory for cats to be registered, just like the family dog. In houses where there are more than two cats, people must pay a registration fee of $2O a cat as well as another $8 a year. The town has been plagued with wild cats, and,, the Rockhampton council hopes compulsory . registration will help solve the problerrt - and pay for destroying the wild cats. Alive and kicking RADIO 3ZB would like its listeners to know that the announcer and newsreader, Bill Southgate, is aljve, well, and genuinely ion holidays. The telephone lines at 3ZB were hot yesterday when large numbers of listeners read in the newspaper in the morning: a death notice for another . William Southgate, who also was in his 30s. Since A the .radio announcer' of the same name .had .gone bn holiday only this week, and. his job was

being taken over in the interim by a colleague, it seems that many listeners put two and two together and came up with five. Compromise THE Post Office says that it would like to clarify the lists of emergency and important numbers at the beginning of the new telephone directory. In Wednesday’s “Diary” we mentioned the list on page four of the directory, which says that people living in Glenroy should ring a Glentunnel number if they want an ambulance, but that people in. Glentunnel should ring a Darfield number. We naturally thought this was odd, as did a number of readers, who had brought it to our attention. What the Post Office would like to point out is that these are all alternative numbers. People in Glenroy and Glentunnel can, in fact, ring either Darfield or Glentunnel if they want an ambulance. The same applies to other places with a bracket at the end of the line. Unfortunately, the printers of the telephone directory were unable ta insert a proper

bracket at the end of the lines, joining up all the alternative numbers. They had to make do with a series of separate brackets. And, in case you get confused with the impressive array of small brackets all over the page, they have printed some of them back to front,- so you can tell where one bracket ends, and another begins, Tricky. Light of truth? A UNITED STATES postage stamp, depicting an electric light . bulb, has come to light on a letter addressed to a Christchurch reader. Apparently, it is part of President Carter’s master plan to end his country’s dependence oh expensive Middle Eastern oil. The stamp, of $1 denomination, has the words “America’s light fueled by truth and reason” printed around the side and the light bulb in the centre is seen to be glowing in the dark. Idealism in a ..nutshell. Since when did truth and reason replace hydro-dams and nuclear power plants?