Reporter's Diary

Press, 10 November 1980, Page 2

Reporter's Diary

Traffic stopper AN air hostess on holiday in the Nelson area last week was a passenger in a car that was involved in

an accident: a Mini had become entangled in the rear of the bigger and sturdier car she was travelling in and the people in the Mini had come off the worse. In spite of feeling shaken, she realised that, her first-aid training would have to be used on one of the passengers in the Mini who haa gone through the windscreen and who was bleeding badly from a big gash on the forehead. Our heroine, wearing typical holiday gear of jeans and a T-shirt, used the T-shirt, the nearest thing she could find, for a pressure pad without stopping to spare a thought for herself. It was not until the ambulance had taken the injured away that she realised she did not have a bra< on and was providing an eye catching and potentially hazardous display for passing motorists. The policeman who attended the accident came up to her at that moment and said jocularly that if she did not cover herself soon he would have to book her for indecent exposure or. ; for causing another traffic accident. Ao free puff

A NEW board game called “Smokers Wild” has been developed in Canada w’ith the admirable intention of deterring young people from using tobacco. Each square on the board represents a day of your life: you throw the dice and if you land on a square depicting various realistic cigarette packets with such names as "Pale Male”, “Grave’n Pray”, “Burns On and Stenches,” . and “Jim Slayer Specials” you incur penalties which hasten your progress to the “Gone” square. The apparent loser, who finish-

es last, wins the game. The box carries a health warning: “This game is addictive, could save your life, and may be hazardous to tabacco companies.” The game was developed by Clifford Forward, an Englishman living in Canada. When it first appeared there, tobacco enterprises tried to stop its sale but without success. Hot issue

THE response to an article in the August issue of the Public Service Association's “Journal” about shower facilities for pub-lic-service offices has been staggering, says an item in the October issue. “We often ask for readers’ comments but usually get only a handful of letters,” it says. “This time we got several dozen replies representing a large number of people. One, for example, was signed by 106 people in a Manukau City office complex. There has been nothing comparable in recent ‘Journal’ history. It is probably fair to say that the letters reflect immense interest and support among many thousands of public servants.” What is this hot issue that has spurred so many public servants into such a flurry of letter writing? They want showers fitted for men and women in all public-ser-vice buildings so that office workers who jog or cycle to work or in the lunch hour can freshen up before starting work. “The most embarrassing thing about being a cyclist,” says one of the letter writers, “is arriving at work sweaty in the morning and having to stay that way all day.” That being the case, the noncyclists would support the installation of showers, too.

Hubble, bubble . . . EYE of lizard, brain of

toad. . . A scene from “Macbeth”. No, just everyday life in the Chinese pharmaceutical industry. An American science writer, Joe Dopper, has written a book on the “stewpot” approach . to drugs in China. He tells of a Chinese physician writing out a prescription for a patient with hypertension: three little goldfish (stewed), black toad (crushed), and the eye of an iguana (taken neat).

Tongue-tied actors TONGUE-TWISTERS in the script of a dramatic adaptation of the novel “Treasure Island” which is being rehearsed by the Rangiora Dramatic Society are giving the actors some problems. The play’s director, Barry Grant, has adapted the play from the book and has retained the original style of speech. It has been hard to keep a straight face at rehearsals a.s actors have tripped over tongue-twisters such as “the trouble-mongering son of a rum-puncheon seacock", and “I don’t volly bullying a marlinspike.” Mr Grant hopes that the tonge-tied cast members will be able to get out the right words by the opening night, November 22. Dusty solution OFFICIALS in Shanghai have come up with a novel way of handling the frustrating problem of queue-jumping. But it is doubtful if Westerners would accept the solution. According to a Shanghai; newspaper, the “Liberation Daily.” to keep order and to stop people from pushing into the queue out of turn at the ferry ticket office in the mornings “the staff write numbers on the back of those queuing in chalk.”