Reporter’s diary

Press, 30 January 1984, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Hororata trots EARLY history of trotting at Hororata is sought by the Hororata Trotting Club. The club will hold its last meeting at Hororata on March 10 because it is unable to meet the cost of computerisation at the course. It hopes to be able to race at Ashburton in future. The last racing day at Hororata will be held in style. Old time saddle races, a cocktail hour, and other activities are planned. The club has established a subcommittee to organise the day and to search for old memorabilia and information about the early days of trotting at Hororata. The sub-committee’s chairman, Mr A. Miller, said that the club was hampered by the fact that only one former club president was still alive to share his memories. Anyone with any information which may be of use is asked to get in touch with Mr Miller at Hororata R.D. or by telephoning Hororata 815. Range of services THE NORTH Canterbury Hospital Board’s staff newsletter has drawn, attention to the services provided by the board’s mailrooms. “There is an occasional odd occurrence, such as the receipt of a card from the Post Office to uplift an article, which, after inquiries had been made of various hospital departments, then to Lyttelton wharf, turned out to be a

crated sports car from the United Kingdom, owned by one of the medical staff,” the magazine said. Travel comfort WHETHER patients should travel head first or feet first is also debated in the newsletter. Patients wheeled feet first on trolleys can see where they are going, the article says, but patients wheeled head first can converse with, and see and be seen more easily by the orderly, creating a more friendly atmosphere. “There is, too, a superstition that to be wheeled feet first equates with death, and certainly, the deceased in our hospitals are almost invariably pushed feet first. A compromise would be to wheel the patient crosswise to the corridor so that with a slight turn of the head the patient could chat to the orderly, see both what is coming and what has gone, and be seen by the orderly who would be pushing on the side of the bed. The disadvantage would be that all corridors would have to be widened, or there would have to be lay-bys at strategic corridor points,” the newsletter says. Alternatively, it suggests an. arrangement for patients to be wheeled head first with a large mirror above the foot of the bed so that the patient would get all the advantages of the crosswise corridor travel, but with the added *dvantage of a view down the corridor. How nice

to know that something so apparently trivial is given such earnest consideration by the board, which ends its article with the comforting assurance that the patient’s preference is always acted upon. Varied diet A RECENT issue of “The Times” described a dinner which included a fruit bowl containing “Israeli kumquats, Greek lychees, Brazilian paw-paws, Kenyan mangoes, and New Zealand kiwis, augmenting traditional supplies of chestnuts, clementines, dates, and nuts.” The reader who sent the clipping to the “Diary” has speculated on whether the kiwis would be served “feathers and all.” Timely AN AMERICAN studying for a Ph.D at Lincoln College lost this digital watch last November while taking random samples from his 3.5 ha trial wheat paddock. He made frequent visits to the paddock after that for further samples and last Tuesday, just a day before the crop was to be harvested, made yet another call to gather final samples. Sure enough, he found his watch which, after eight weeks and extremes. of weather, was still shoeing the exact time — to’the second.