Reporter’s diary

Press, 13 March 1985, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Tall ship

COLIN WYNN, official artist for the Royal New Zealand Navy, who lives in Reefton, of all places, has done a fine painting of the half-built sail training ship Spirit of New Zealand to promote fund-raising efforts for her completion. The 230vessel is expected to cosEmore than $2.2 million, cheap in our book for the asset ,i she will be for New Zealand youth, and the fine sight she will make at sea. For two months, packets of Choysa teabags will contain a cork .coaster showing a reproduction of Mr Wynn’s painting. On proof of purchase of three coasters, Choysa will send its customers a full-sized print of Mr Wynn’s painting. The original work has been given to the Spirit of Adventure Trust Board. It is expected to realise several thousand dollars if the board decides to sell it.

First-name terms ALMOST as well known as his owner is Morghan, the little dog belonging to the Mayor of Greymouth, Dr Barry Dallas. After escaping from custody the other day, he was seen digging in the pebble garden in front of the Greymouth Courthouse. “Look,” said a court official during a High Court

recess, "there’s Morghan.” “Good heavens,” remarked a visiting Christchurch barrister. “I know you Coasters are supposed to know everybody else, but the names of every dog as well?” Notable event K READER was moved to telephone us yesterday to say that the oddest thing

had happened while he was walking into town. A car stopped for him at a pedestrian crossing while he was still standing on the footpath. Keen demands CHRISTIANS, as a rule, do not condone theft, but there are exceptions. “That’s good,” beamed one Christian when he read of a series of ironic thefts in Australia

recently. The Victorian Education Department’s library is considering taking the Bible off its reference shelves, and making it available for loan only, because so many copies are being stolen. It seems that Bible readers here are more honest. A few Bibles have been stolen from the Canterbury Public Library from time to time,* “but there hasn’t been a rush on them,”

according to a spokesman for the library’s social sciences department. The Christchurch City Librarian, Mr John Stringleman, says that no line of book seems to be any more popular than any other with library thieves. Quite often the thieves are enthusiasts. When caught, they are found to have a cache of stolen books on a particular subject in which they have a keen interest. Appeal for Ann THE FLOATING of the New Zealand dollar has had its ups and downs for many people, but it has helped the appeal to send Ann Crawford, of Invercargill, to England for her heart and lung transplant. The London hospital had required £16,000 in advance. Three weeks ago this equalled $42,780. Last week, when the appeal organisers sent the money after carefully monitoring the exchange rates, it cost only $39,564, a saving of $3OOO. Basement basher TO HER DISMAY, a young woman who works in the central city was crashing company cars almost faster than they could be panelbeaten. The little old lady from Pasadena may have been “the terror of Colorado Boulevard,” as the hit song

went, but this young woman was at her worst below ground. As “the terror of the parking basement,” she rammed and scraped among pillars and other vehicles until an executive had to venture down to try to reduce the damage by basement driving lessons. It seems to have worked. Wearing a mouse THREATENING to hang a mouse on someone might not have much effect these days, except among a few members of older generations, but there was a time when it did. A colleague came across the quaint expression in “The wild Shore,” by Stephen Longstreet, about the hurly-burly of life in San Francisco last century, in which a madam wrote that one of her proteges from the country had “had a mouse hung on her a few times.” That invaluable work, “The Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English,” reveals that to hang a mouse on someone means to give them a black eye. A “mouse” was Cockney slang for a black eye, and the term later became common in the boxing world. A few of our older colleagues knew of it. Unfortunately, the language grows less colourful by the day.

—Peter Comer