Reporter’s diary

Press, 12 April 1984, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Departmental pride SEVERAL people expressed curiosity yesterday about the strange flag flying on the new Canterbury Centre complex. It is the official departmental ensign of the Customs Department, which officially opened its new offices in the Canterbury Centre yesterday, although it has been in residence there for two weeks. The flag is a New Zealand Ensign, with the letters, “H.M.C.” (for “Her Majesty’s Customs”). Too grand RESIDENTS on Grande Vista Drive want the name of their street changed. The Heathcote County Council has received a letter from seven property owners saying that the name had no historical link with the area and seemed pretentious as well as long. “It also lends itself to the unfortunate abbreviation of ‘Grande V.D.’,” the letter said. Between them, the property owners have agreed on Kiteroa Place, meaning “long view,” which they have suggested as the new name. Councillors at the council’s town planning committee on Tuesday evening seemed to favour the proposal. Gardens pool AN EAGLE-EYED frequenter of the Botanic Gardens has telephoned us to find out why the paddling pool in the gardens has remained open unusually late this autumn. He feared that the pool might be gobbling up ratepayers’money and giving toddlers ajills. A

spokesman for the Christchurch City Council’s parks and reserves department said yesterday that while the pool was usually closed about the end of March, the cost of keeping water in it was minimal compared with the enjoyment it gave its users. A big number of families would have taken advantage of last weekend’s warm weather to visit the pool, said the spokesman. Coast writers meet “INDIGENOUS writing, potentially every bit as exciting as Dostoyevsky or Chekhov,” was how Mr T. E. Sanson described the talent on show when writers from Buller and Westland met in the old Charleston Police Station recently. “Very worth while,” was the verdict of Mr Peter Hooper, who gave a critic’s appraisal “gently and supportively” after five hours of readings. Noting that the development of writing on the West Coast seemed assured, Mr Sanson said it was doubtful if any of the group had ever heard such skilled presentation from poets such as Nick Messenger, of Waimangaroa, lan Davidson, of Blackwater, and Neil Simmons, of Ikamatua. He added: “One can picture the Russian writers grouped round Gogol or Pushkin, attentively savouring the sonorous language at first hand. Being a party to such in historic Charleston, which probably had not heard a balladeer such as the Australian, Simmons, for more than 100 years, was a treat”

Honorary member MR JACK HORRELL, a retired farmer, of Horrelville, compiler of the J. E. Horrell Land Ownership Record, covering Canterbury north of the Waimakariri River, has been made an honorary member of the New Zealand Society of Genealogists, in recognition of his work. Before the beak “PETERBOROUGH,” who mercilessly exposes the grammatical faults of others in his column in the

“Daily Telegraph,” has been taken to task by a reader who sent him a cutting of “Peterborough’s” own newspaper, with a note challenging him “to show that you have the courage to remove in public the mote from thine own eye, as well as the beams from thy brother’s.” The story dealt with the case of two men in court for stealing eggs from a falcon’s nest, and said: “When Jones was searched, he was carrying a leather and string trap used to capture birds of prey stuffed in his underpants.” —Peter Comer