Reporter’s diary

Press, 7 August 1982, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

U.F.0.?

READERS are invited to identify the object (pictured), brought to us yesterday by a retired Christchurch airman. He thinks it was owned by his father. It is made of brass, with embellishments of copper on each arm and the three-part base on which it stands, and the arms fold up very compactly. The owner thinks it may be a navigational aid, or something perhaps used in astronomy. Helping hands THURSDAY’S interviews on the feature page with Christchurch people living below the poverty line caused a number of readers to telephone “The Press” with offers of help. Two people offered to pay to have the window repaired in the home of the family which is forced to live in a kitchen. A soccer club wants to buy boots for the boy who cannot afford to play soccer, and a woman wants to hand on children’s clothing to one of the solo parents support groups. If any other readers would like to help in any way, they should get in touch with Mary Gray, of the Low Incomes Working Party, phone 889-634. Thanks due SHE ,IS a very tidy woman, accustomed to tying up loose ends. So when someone in her firm, about a week ago, put on her desk a parking offence ticket he had found

blowing about in High Street, she took'the trouble to forward the ticket; with an explanatory note, to the .Ministry of Transport. On Thursday she received a letter from the department, with this in it: “The Chief Traffic Officer has considered your explanation concerning the alleged parking breach. After careful review, it has been decided that the notice should not be cancelled. Further action will be delayed Until August 18, 1982, to give you time to pay the infringement fee of $4. If the fee is not paid, prosecution will be initiated.’; She rang up the department, and spoke to a woman who remembered, her courteous explanation, and advised her to throw the ticket away This she has

done — so somewhere in Christchurch there is a lucky motorist. Contact AN ITEM yesterday bewailing the lack of- tongs in Christchurch quick-lunch establishments reminded a reader of being in a large store in Christchurch, which had a cake shop. She was waiting, with others, to be served. The assistants behind the . counter were busy in conversation. “Then one of them nonchalantly picked up a pair of .tongs and scratched her head with them,” our informant says. “I didn’t buy anything there. So there is, after all, something to be said for the customers using their hands."

Urgency “STREETS filled with water. Please advise.” A letter to the chairman of the North Canterbury Catchment Board, Mr M. J. 0. Dixon, from relatives visiting Venice, read by- Mr Dixon to a meeting of the board yesterday. Pastoral event “OBSERVER” in the “Financial Times” reports an excerpt from a Sussex parish magazine: “The weather was kind to us, and the Vicarage garden was packed with young men and women bent on enjoying themselves. It was the biggest open-air fathering in the village for years.” ■ Let it be RADIO New Zealand introduced a touch of humour — perhaps unwittingly — into its normally staid broadcast from Parliament on Thursday evening. During divisions, music is usually played while members of Parliament file into the lobbies to vote. On Budget night when the Opposition forced a division on whether urgency would be accorded — mean-’ ing the House would sit until the Budget legislation was passed —-the Beatles tune, “Let it Be,” was played. The Prime Minister, waiting to present the Budget, could have taken heart from the words: “When I find myself in times of trouble . . .

speaking words of wisdom, let it be . . .”