Reporter's diary

Press, 3 August 1981, Page 2

Reporter's diary

Rough ride

TWO absent-minded Canadian skiers had a rough introduction to South Island ski-field driving last week. A well-known ski-field entrepeneur with a bit of room in his car picked them up at the bottom of the field’s access road to take them to their accommodation at a near-by village. The Canadians placed their skis on the upright racks at the back of the car and climbed inside. The driver roared off in a cloud of dust. Moments later there was a clatter as more than $lOOO worth of precision skis hit the road. Next time they will remember to strap on the skis. Cosh the driver IT IS always a pleasure to see pedestrians get their own back against the uncaring motorist, and it happened again on the corner of Hereford and Manchester Street on Friday. An elderly man shuffled across the road, carrying a duffle bag, and a car failed to give • way, nearly running into him. It stopped centimetres short of the. pedestrian, whose blood

immediately ran hot. Uttering oaths to the delight of watching shoppers, he bashed the driver’s window for a full 30 seconds with his duffle bag. The driver looked most concerned. Duty done, the man shuffled the rest of the way across the street and into the lunchtime crowd. Terse verse

Please rent me your home, So my family can roam, For two years in the hills or

north-west. Three bedrooms or more

Fully furnished for sure, This Pom would be your grateful guest. This verse appeared in the “Wanted to Lease” column of “The Press” recently. Mr Rick Westley, who placed the advertisment, said he was driven to doggerel by a lack of response to his previous, more conventional, efforts. Mr Westley has been looking for a place for the last five weeks, and his wife and family arrive shortly, so the poem was an attempt to “stir up some sort of reaction” from people who might ignore an ordinary advertisement. His attempt failed. Only two people replied to

the advertisement, neither of their houses were suitable, and Mr Westley was “very disappointed.” He is now going to resort to local radio, and we understand he is thinking in terms of a catchy little jingle . . .

Censored Chatterly RADIO listeners in New Zealand may soon get to hear a new 8.8. C. production of "Lady Chatterly's Lover,” the raunchy novel by D. H. Lawrence. In true 8.8. C. style, the adaptation has been made “suitable for a wide audience,” or, in other words, censored. A spokesman for the adaptor said he has "treated the explicit love scenes in a stylish and inoffensive manner and not felt the need to include any of the four-letter words which attracted notoriety when the book was first published. We decided that what seemed appropriate on the written page did not necessarily seem appropriate when spoken out loud.” This means that when New Zealanders hear the play, which is due to be transmitted as part of the 8.8. C. World Service,

they will just have to use their imagination during the play’s many meaningful silences. Ad nauseum “COME TO the Hotel Excelsior, Naples,” an advertisement in the magazine, “Europe,” beckons. “Over the last 75 years, out hotel has looked after 12 million guests, many of them famous, all of them important to us,” continues the ad, enticing the reader to sample the class, the style, the dignified elegance for which Italy’s CIGA hotels are noted. To convince the reader of just what a classy establishment it is, CIGA provides a photograph of one of its guests who was well known for his cultured taste and elegance. A fully uniformed Hermann Goering, carrying his white gloves, beams invitingly from the hotel entrance. Seeing things? SIGNS spotted in a city dairy: “If you see something on the shelves we haven’t got, we probably have more of it out the back.”