Reporter’s diary

Press, 19 July 1983, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Church trust A CHARITABLE trust is being formed to help maintain and restore the Church of St Mary the Virgin in Addington (see drawing). The church was built in 1867

on land given by Henry Sewell, the solicitor for the Canterbury Association, and briefly Premier of New Zealand. The building was extended in 1880, and the vicarage erected nearby in 1876. Set in its own square, with fine old English trees, the church has remained a place of daily worship. The present congregation works hard to maintain the ministry in the area, but finds that it cannot adequately maintain and restore the buildings. The Friends of St Mary’s Church, Addington, will be invited to pay an annual subscription and to support occasional special appeals. A meeting to discuss the trust will be held at the church tomorrow at 7.30 p.m. Hat hunt MUSOC, the University of Canterbury’s musical society, is looking for 10gallon hats, holsters and guns to use in its 1983 musical, “Holy Smoke.” The props are needed for the western, which will be performed at the Ngaio Marsh Theatre from July 29 to August 6. Anyone who can help is asked to telephone Andrew Sewell, at 516-460.

Belt reward BELTING up could get Auckland motorists free admission to the movies for the duration of the city’s “fasten tight fortnight.” Auckland City traffic officers will issue complimentary cinema tickets to drivers using their seat belts correctly during a fortnight-long safety campaign which will start next week. Dinner treat HUNDREDS of Americans will be getting cryptic postcards from New Zealand this week — from friends and relatives who have not even been here. A Los Angeles hotel, the Bonaventure, recently held a New Zealand promotion at one of its restaurants. Everyone who ordered a “Down Under” dish was given a card showing North or South Island scenes. They were invited to address them to friends and relatives, and the hotel passed them on to the New Zealand ITavel Office which sent them in bulk to Wellington. The Tourist and Publicity Department then stuck “Beautiful New Zealand” series stamps on the cards, and posted them back to America. No doubt there will be some surprised faces in the United States this week as the cards start to arrive. Most people wrote that they were having a wonderful time in New Zealand. Some pretended it was a last-minute trip. Others said|they had come over

just for dinner. The promotion will almost certainly be repeated. Carpet bagging SOCIAL Credit’s leader, Mr Bruce Beetham, said last week that Christchurch would become known as the “Carpet bag City” for Labour if Mr Jim Anderton sought Parliamentary nomination for Sydenham. Carpet bag, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is a travelling bag. made of carpet. “Carpet bagger,” as a term of political abuse, was first used in the . “Daily News” on September 18, 1868. It is defined as “a scornful appellation applied after the American Civil War of 1861 to 1865 to immigrants from the North to the Southern states whose ‘property qualification’ consisted merely of the contents of the carpet bag which they had brought with them. Hence it was applied to all Northerners who went South and tried, by the negro vote or otherwise, to obtain political influence; and generally to anyone interfering with the politics of a locality with which he is thought to have no permanent or genuine connection.” Footprinting

SRI LANKAN police will in future take footprints of suspected criminals, as well as fingerprints. Many criminals on the island apparently do not wear shoes, and are said to leave footprints at the scene (j>f their crimes.