Reporter’s diary

Press, 24 May 1985, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Non-start near MEMBERS of the Canterbury Non-Ski Club are excited. Last week’s snowfalls in the Southern Alps brought the start of the nonseason that much closer, and club members are busy planning activities that will keep them as far from the ski slopes as possible. According to Warwick Franklin, an anonymous but very boring skier who did not know when to stop blathering was unwittingly responsible for the formation of the non-ski club, believed to be the first of its kind in Australasia. The club has just celebrated its first anniversary with a paid-up membership of 46. Members have enjoyed a wide range of organised activities in the last 12 months from theatre and restaurant outings to tramping and a trip in the tug Lyttelton. Anyone who wants to non-ski this winter should telephone Mr Franklin at 523-595.

King Dick’s

school

THE LANCASHIRE town of St Helens has a close link with New Zealand through Richard John (“King Dick’’)

Seddon, one of this country’s most famous premiers according to Mr William Lyon, co-manager of the St Helens rugby league team which will play Canterbury at the Show Grounds on Sunday evening. Mr Lyon, who is an amateur historian, informs us that the young Richard Seddon ran a school in his cottage in St Helens, just along the road from where the rugby league ground now is. Things were going very nicely for the young schoolmaster Seddon until a young woman teacher started a rival cottage school not far away. Seddon complained that she was filching his pupils, thereby his livelihood, and set off one day to remonstrate with her. It was a happy ending. They met, fell in love, got married and sailed for New Zealand, where young Seddon went on to become “King Dick.” His little cottage in St Helens is still standing, with a plaque to explain that it was once the home of an Englishman who became the Premier of New Zealand.

On the boil MENTION in “The

yesterday of a man who in 1839 was able to estimate fairly accurately the height of Mount Egmont by boiling a pannikin of water on the summit prompted a couple of readers to inquire how he did it. For those of us who have forgotten what we were taught at school, the phsysics department of the University of Canterbury says that the procedure is elementary, my dear chap. The boiling point of water at sea level is lOOdeg.C (212deg.F). As one goes up, the air pressure decreases, and water boils at a lower temperature. With a thermometer to tell the point at which it boils and a simple calibration table (both of which were available in 1839) it is easy to calculate roughly the height above sea level. James Heberley, the whaler who brewed up on Mount Egmont in 1839, estimated its summit to be 8883 ft above sea level. The trig height is 8260 ft. First, of course, one has to climb one’s mountain. Honours THREE MEMBERS of the Christchurch Foster Care. Association received life

memberships of the association last evening. They are Mrs Ena Adams, Mrs Anne Marie Pike, and Mr Roger Pike. Mrs Adams had worked in foster care for 30 years, while Mr and Mrs Pike had both contributed a “tremendous amount” to foster care in Canterbury, said a spokesman for the association. Enough’s enough STAFF at the Auckland Public Library were a little taken aback by the treatment they got from the writer of an anonymous letter accompanying several musical scripts taken out of the library almost 40 years ago. The note asked why noone had called to collect the scripts earlier. The writer insisted that librarians arrange to pick up other library books “that have been cluttering up my house since 1949,” or start paying rent for the space the books occupied. “I simply cannot accommodate your property in my house for another 36 years,” the writer said. Attack, they say, is the best form of defence ...

— Peter Comer