Reporter’s diary

Press, 12 November 1981, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Running out PERHAPS the only Christchurch pub to have yet had a stock of Mac’s Real Ale, the new Nelson beer, is doing well with it but will probably run out of supplies — both on tap and in flagons — today. The New Brighton Tavern manager said the beer had gone down well on Tuesday, and having the special shipment was mainly a way of introducing local drinkers to the new product. The supply could be a oncer. The manager said he had to go through a considerable process to get it in the first place. Bottles! DID HE ever get to the dairy with his bottles? A man was driving into Rose Street, Somerfield, the other day when he passed a car waiting at the intersection. The car had a bottle-holder, full of empty milk bottles, sitting unsecured on the roof. The first driver, pointing frantically, called out ■ “milk bottles’” But the'pther driver just nodded andismiled

How beautiful ALAN PATON, South African author of “Cry, the Beloved Country,” has published his first novel since 1953. Its title will be familiar to New Zealanders accustomed to hearing tourists say “My, what a beautiful country" you have here.” Paton’s book is called “Ah, but your land is beautiful,” and the 78-year-old author says it comes from people who visit him at his home outside Durban. They are reluctant to comment on the country’s racial policies when asked what they think of South Africa, so they reply with the standard phrase. “What they really mean is how can there be so much grief-for so many in a country which is so beautiful,” Paton says. The way it is PROSPECTIVE* migrants from England to New Zealand used to b& shown this country as. the Godzone we would all like it to be. A new film showing at New Zealand House takes a different tack; it is the first frtm aimed at

European migrants for 10 years. It tells viewers that New Zealand is not another England, that there are strains of multi-cultural living and that there is a lot of hard work to be done. When school children are shown going to a hangi, it rains. There are other reminders that things are not as rosy as the movies and advertising campaigns might show. Still, we come across as a green, healthy, hard-working, egalitarian, racially-integrated society. A clue POPLAR 1 TREE roots have been playing havoc with a sewer line through Dudley Park, Rangiora. They break through the pipe and block it. Borough councillors wonder whether to replace the offending trees or change the pipes for stronger ones. But how to identity the poplars that cause the most trouble underground? The borough’s works overseer knows the answer. One is so big that it is obvious its nourishment has been unnaturally enriched. .

Different versions TWO STORY-TELLERS should never tell the same tale at the same time, especially on a bus. During the recent alpine reunion at Mount Cook, visitors were taken on a bus ride up the Ball Hut Road. At the back of the bus, passengers were told about the runholder who said in his will that he should be buried on the top of a prominent rocky outcrop, and each pallbearer should be paid £5. As the story finished, it started again from the front of the bus. The bus driver had not heard what was going on at the rear, and launched into his own version of the story. Each pallbearer was to be paid $lOO, he said. One passenger thinks it must have been a case of severe alpine inflation. See the typist A FINANCIAL entry in one North Canterbury local body report seemed to make that authority out to be some sort of home-wrecking ogre. A $lO cheque was listed for the New Zealand Society for Prevention of Home and Family