Reporter’s diary

Press, 14 May 1985, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Cramped quarters YOU CAN sit on the front porches of four houses being built in Barbadoes Street, next to St Albans Park, but if you want to stand up, watch your head. Everything about the houses is very small. Local residents have been looking askance at the structures which are really construction buildings. The novel way of putting the construction buildings on the site has already

attracted some interest from the neighbourhood. Inside one of the cottages is an empty biscuit packet, •evidence that someone sheltered there. The Bubble READING ABOUT damage done by vandals to the Bishop Harper memorial drinking fountain in Cathedral Square reminded a Christchurch man of a fountain that used to stand in front of the Cathedral many years ago. No-one seems to know what became of the fountain that was much like the one still running in Clare Road, but it used to be the meeting place for young people. It was called “the Bubble,” and “See you at the Bubble” was the standard phrase for telling friends where you could be found in the city centre about 50 years ago. Leisurely pace FRANK ALACK, the famous mountain guide who now lives in Nelson, says that a study of glaciers could be one way to put our growing leisure time to good use. He has been having another look at the Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers that he knows so well, and he reports that he could

hear the pinnacles crushing at about 4000 ft, a sure sign of forward movement. That movement will stop while the glaciers hibernate for winter. Mr Alack says that a wet, warm summer later this year could produce a spectacular forward surge worth watching. Both glaciers have receded about 3km since he first saw them 57 years ago. Glaciers move the same way rivers do, he says, but about three million times slower. More stations A SECOND fitness track for joggers and more serious athletes has been built in Christchurch, this time at Denton Park in Paparua County. Its 10 stations are on the park’s perimeter. Materials were provided by the county council, but the track was built by the Kiwanis Club of North-West Christchurch, which also laid out and erected the first one in North Hagley Park two years ago. Family branches YOU NEVER can tell what you might find when you start climbing round in your family tree. Eighteen months ago, a colleague did riot realise he had any American connections. He grew up in Waimate, and

his mother’s father came out from Ireland. His grandfather’s brothers went to the United States and gravitated toward the Middle West. After months of writing letters and filling in the family gaps, he is about to leave for a family reunion in California. On the way, he will spend some time in Missouri. He will visit some relatives by marriage in Marceline, a small town that was the boyhood home of Walt Disney. He will go from there to Independence, the home of a former President, Harry Truman, where the sister of a distant relative by marriage is the editor of the “Independence Examiner,” a daily newspaper. Another view

NOT EVERYONE in Africa saw the Prime Minister’s recent trip as Mr Lange did. A Halswell man has received a letter from a friend in Zimbabwe who said this about the visit: “It caused no more stir than any of these other visits that we have from nonentities from behind the Iron Curtain. The usual fanfare, of course, and photos of him looking like Edward Kennedy, who we all loathe, and Mrs Lange looking thoroughly bad-tempered and sour. Is she?”