Reporter’s diary

Press, 4 June 1982, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Paternal interest IN AN interesting reversal of equal rights campaigning, a New York father has taken his employers to court to try to get six weeks paternity leave. A Christchurch .couple, who know the man and his wife, were visiting the United States last month and stayed with them for several days. They could not help but become involved. The case had been going on for some months, our Christchurch man said upon his , return, and the baby was now 10 months old. The man, Mr Robert Batsche,' an audioengineer for N.8.C., is suing his company for the paternity leave, charging them that he has been discriminated against because of his sex, since N.B.C. regularly granted six-week maternity leave for mothers. . He wanted the leave while, his wife, an air hostess, was resuming work after taking six months off to have her baby. "Parenting is a twoway thing,” Mr Batsche told the newspapers after the judge (a .woman) threw the case out of the lower court. Mr Batsche has. hired a lawyer who made a name for himself some years ago when helping women to fight for their rights, and-he plans to take the. case ~as far as the Supreme Court of the United States in Washington, if need

be, to “fight for his paternal rights.? Although the paternity leave, if granted, would be tod late now to be any use for this, his first baby, he says at least he will be ready for when the next one comes along. Very old sock ARCHAEOLOGISTS are getting excited about a soggy woollen sock about 1000 years old found in Britain recently. They think it was cast off by a Viking warrior in tenth century York. The sock has survived intact in the wet ground near the Exe River until discovered during a Viking dig in Coppergate, York. Soon, it will take pride of place in the Viking exhibition at the Yorkshire museum in the city. Michael Clegg, the museum curator, said -it was an exciting find. . “Textiles don’t normally survive this long,” he said, “but this old woolly sock has been preserved because of the damp ground.” Acting older

MIDDLE AGE, depending on your point of view) can begin anywhere from 25 to 50. Some spritely senior citizens Of 60 years of age or more claim to have only just reached middle age, and some people never admit to it at all. If. you are, prepared

to own up to middle age, you are male, and you are able to act, the Elmwood Players would like to see you on Sunday morning. The players held auditions for their forthcoming production recently, and not one middle-aged man turned up. So they , are holding another lot of auditions, specially for middleaged men. If they cannot find any,'they will have to use young, men, made up to look a bit older — and that would not be as effective as the real thing, they say. Auditions are at 10.30 a.m. at the Elmwood Playhouse, Fulton Avenue. Renewed A RICKETY old bicycle, normally parked at the rear of one of Nelson’s better known pubs, and used by many of its patrons on short trips around town; disappeared without trace one day recently. It had been around for ages, and had always been put back after its little journeys. But this time, the borrower kept it. Weeks went by, then one of the tavern regulars discovered it at a Nelson educational institution and swiped it back. To his delight, he found that the long-term borrower had replaced its ageing and balding tyre with a new one. The bicycle is now back in,service at; the pub.

All's we 11... THE CANTERBURY Promotion Council mailed to its members a notice of proposed alteration to the council’s rules for consideration at the annual meeting later this month. The alteration had an accompanying wind-ing-up notice. The council itself was not winding up, but it was a mere formality to fit in with the Inland Revenue Department’s requirements of an incorporated society, to exempt it from tax. The council’s executive officer, Mr Bruce Dunstan, reported yesterday that one member who had seen the winding-up notice, but not the explanation, came storming into the office in high dudgeon. He was most upset, since he had paid his subscription only a fortnight ago - and now the place was closing down, he said. Preoccupied

WHEN the Royal Marines freed the relieved Falkland Islanders from the Argentines at Port San Carlos, on East Falkland recently, one of the islanders provided some light relief to a tense situation. “You’ll all have to watch yourselves around here,” said Mrs Monica May, “because with all the goingson in the past few weeks we haven’t been able to get the rams out to the ewes.”