Reporter’s diary

Press, 29 March 1982, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Too young?

HOW YOUNG is too young to run a marathon? Canterbury’s Dean Forster completed last year’s Nike City of Christchurch Marathon at the age of eight. However, Britain’s Amateur Athletic Association has banned a girl, aged 11, from running marathons because it says she is too young. Cheryl Page, the daughter of an Army officer, has won 120 trophies for long-distance running and walking in West Germany, Switerland, Belgium and Austria. Her ambition is to run a marathon for Britain in an Olympic Games, but unless the officials relent, it will be the 1992 games—when she is 21— before she will qualify. She finishes a marathon “bright as a button,” according to her father. She* ran secretly in a marathon in Hampshire recently by hiding round a corner near the start then joining in with her father as the other runners went out of sight. Her time was four hours 48 minutes, about 24 minutes slower than Dean Forster’s marathon time last year. To cheer up A LONDON woman, aged 20, with debts of more than

$NZ26,000, has been described as one of Britain’s youngest-ever bankrupts. She told the London Bankruptcy Court that her spending spree began when she was a teen-ager. “I suffer from depression,” she said. “It was a way of cheering myself up.” Beast defied

A SUGGESTION in last week’s Diary that no effective and practical method has been found for sandfly eradication is not shared by a Christchurch man who claims a. victory over the little beasts during a recent trip to Milford. He took Vitamin B tablets regularly for two weeks before his trip, and a few while at Milford. Although at times he estimated that up to 60 sandflies swarmed over his forearms, not one was prepared to bite him. For a man who normally gets attacked and bitten regularly, the victory was most comfortable. Milk bars

BREWERS in England’s Midlands are giving a new meaning to the term “milk bars” in their battle to halt dwindling pub crowds. Milk will be served in draught, alongside the beer pumps, at 30 pubs in the area on a

three-month trial. Straight milk will cost 40 pence (NZ94c) a pint, compared with 23 pence (NZ54c) a pint from shops and the milkman. It also will be offered in alcoholic cocktails. Demand for beer in recession-hit Britain is down by an estimated three million pints a day. Struck out

AN UNSUSPECTING mouse is thought to have met a tragic end last Friday morning after being struck by a rolled copy of “The Press.” A staff photographer found the dead mouse “pressed” between the newspaper and a rose bush outside his house when he collected the newspaper, before going to work. He assumes that because it showed no signs of a fight, the unfortunate mouse must have been struck by the paper thrown from the delivery car. No thanks

STAFF in New Zealand hotels and restaurants please take note: A recent issue ol the "Peking Review,” reports that last year staff in eight hotels in Shanghai had tc “kindly refuse” tips and presents 800 times in their dealings with foreign tourists.