Reporter’s diary

Press, 16 May 1985, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Famine fund

TODAY IS International Milk Day, when one cent from every bottle of milk sold in New Zealand will go to Ethiopia to help boost the famine fund. A cheque of $16,000 to $17,000 will be sent to the fund if the nation’s average milk bottle sales of between 1.6 and 1.7 million are true to form. Milk money will be used for seeds and medicine. On the footpath MOTORISTS trying to enter the Christchurch Town Hall’s public car-park have been confused because Victoria Square redevelopment work beside Kilmore Street has taken away the entrance crossing. Until construction starts on the new Parkroyal Hotel later this year, the car-park will remain open. One driver said it was now necessary to use the private Town Hall carpark crossing, then turn hard tight and drive up the footpath to reach the public car-park entrance. Some motorists were confused by the change and drove round the block — and it has now become a very large block with the closing of Victoria Square — before deciding that the footpath was the only access available. That will change this week, City Council engineers say, when aa temporary channel crossing is built where the old entrance used to be. Sea legs THINGS CAN get pretty rough sometimes when you are a landlubber and also a member of a seaward Lyttelton Harbour Board committee. At the board meeting yesterday, a recent day spent looking at small craft facilities was mentioned. Committee members travelled round the harbour in the launch Orari, when the weather was less than balmy. One board member, a stevedore more used to the dry land side of the harbour, was overcome by the choppy water at one point and vomited over the side. When his plight was mentioned by another member, he took the only suitable action — he stuck out his tongue. Backyard burners RENEWED TALK about

the possibility of outlawing rubbish fires in cities will probably spark the same kind of protest that has always come when fireplace bans are mentioned. So far, metropolitan Christchurch communities confine their bans to the dry season, when the fire risk is high. A year-round prohibition was mentioned by the Canterbury United Council’s air pollution committee yesterday. Residents who suffer the smells and smoke from neighbourhood fires will have as much to say as those who find it convenient to light up whenever the burn barrel overflows. Why is it, asked one woman, that backyard burners wait until the wind is away from their properties, and when the washing has just been hung out to dry, before burning their rubbish? Some homeowners have noticed that neighbours seem to be more embarrassed about having fires these days. Instead of bounding out to put another bundle on the fire, they furtively approach the barrel when nobody is looking.

Late dawn STAFF wintering over at Scott Base were all up and bright-eyed for the dawn parade on Anzac Day. It was easier for them then for us further north, since the sun did not rise until 11.56 a.m. They also lowered the New Zealand Ensign for the winter that day. It will stay down until the sun reappears in early August.

Highland cooking A TEKAPO businessman, John Fridd, has told us about a new recipe book, “Mackenzie Muster,” compiled by a group of women in the Fairlie district. Described by its writers as “a treasure trove of favourite recipes gathered from the mountains to the sea.. passed on from generation to generation,” the book also has drawings by past and present Mackenzie Country artists, plus local poetry. Included among traditional recipes are some more unusual ones, including lamb cooked in a hollow log (an 18kg lamb, a log,

and mint sauce), oven-dried jerky and bannocks, an old Highland staple. The book also has recipes from such well known housewives as Mrs Naomi Lange and Lady Muldoon. Proceeds from the book will go to the Fairlie Centennial Project. An initial print run of 2000 has sold out, but more books should be available at the end of this month. Delicacy ANOTHER recipe in the “Mackenzie Muster” cookbook is for barbecued lambs’ tails. Ingredients: a flock of lambs and some beer. Gather up lambs’ tails in a bag, light a fire, and spread the tails on the glowing embers. Lift them off when all the wool has been singed, and let them cool awhile. Bite the skin and tear it off as if you were skinning a snake. Before you eat the tails, have a few beers. Unrecognised BEFORE HIS post-midnight marriage ceremony this week, the rock star, Bruce

Springsteen, managed to avoid notice even while playing pool in a workingclass Oregon tavern. The father and brothers of his bride-to-be took him to the Firestone Inn near Lake Oswego a few days before the wedding. The group fitted in so well with the Friday night crowd that noone recognised Springsteen, even when he and his future brothers-in-law were playing his songs on the jukebox and singing along with them.