Reporter’s diary

Press, 9 August 1985, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Back soon IT HAS taken a demolition and renovation job to get George Waine out of his Whitcoulls Arcade hairdressing shop for a few days. George's shop, now run in partnership with his son. John, has not been closed for 63 years, but it will have to close for a while next Friday because the Hereford Court building arcade is being redeveloped. On August 21. the shop will open for haircutting only on the first floor of the building. where the Waines will continue to cut hair until their new shop opens on October 29. The new shop will not be completely different. It will have the handsome old chairs, gold gas lamps and the Gentlemen's Hairdressing Saloon frontage sign. The shop was the first one in Hereford Court. George Waine came to it as an apprentice from one round the corner in Colombo Street. That one had seven chairs, and the Waines have three. John has worked in the shop for 38 years. Unlike his father, he has taken normal holidays, and has been round the world. George said he had never been anywhere, but that might change soon. For many years, he used to finish a normal working day then go to Christ’s College to cut hair there on three nights a week.

Changing SINCE his was

running late and could not reach a bus to Burwood Hospital for her work on time, a Christchurch man offered to drive her to the bus. He began work at a more civilised hour, and so he was still in his nightshirt. He wrapped a blue towelling robe with white trim round him. stepped into a pair of street shoes, and they were off. Just past the Riccarton roundabout, and into Riccarton Avenue through Hagley Park, they heard the distressingly familiar bang of a blow-out. The man pulled over, took a look at his short dressing gown (way above the knees) before deciding to put it out of his mind, and got out of the car — still gallantly, if a little shyly — to change the tyre.’ The girlfriend stood on the roadside and laughed, showing that she was a good sport. They were late for the hospital bus, even though he had the car tyres switched in record time.' and she was taken by car all the way to Burwood. Wimborne A NEW street sign went up in Wimborne Crescent, Bromley, about five months ago. For more than 11 years, signs on the street posts had said Wimborne Crescent, but the name now suddenly had an extra letter. It had become Wimbourne Crescent. People began to wonder whether they really lived where they thought they did, where their property deeds thought

they did. and where the City Council rates department thought they did. Their identity crisis can now come to an’ end. The City Council officer responsible for street-name changes could remember nothing about a change, and went downstairs to the archives to find out what was going on. The main index register said Wimborne. so that was obt iously the correct spelling. He 'checked the 1977 and 1983 editions of the Lands and Survey Department’s city map. and found a clue to the street-sign change. Although each edition had Wimborne Crescent in its index, each also had Wimbourne Crescent on the map face. The new sign went up because someone checked the Lands and Survey map and thought that must be correct. A new sign is now being ordered, and will be ready in about six weeks. World hunger AN IDLE examination by the agricultural editor of "The Press" of International Wheat Council statistics shows that the world produces enough wheat and coarse grains such as barley, maize, and sorghum to give every man. woman, and child of a four billion world population one kilogram of grain most day’s of the year. When rice production and food products from animals raised on pasture are added, an appreciation of world hunger as a distribution'problem and not a

production problem emerges. Of course, one of the distribution problems is the feeding of animals on grains and derived concentrates, greatly reducing the efficiency of cereal use. New Zealand has a proud record in this regard, since it has always fed its two largest animal species, sheep and cattle, on grass instead of grain.

Room to move AFTER doing even more calculating, our farm editor showed that the world's four billion people would have 67 sq m of space each if they all moved to New Zealand. Not all that space would be dry or horizontal. Across the Tasman Sea. the Australians could offer 28 times that amount of room — about 1900 sq m each, or not far short of half an acre. Most of it would be desert. The Rotherfield FOR MANY years, a Christchurch woman has owned a hotel-ware plate stamped with the name of the Rotherfield Hotel. Christchurch. So far. no-one she has asked seems to remember the hotel — where it was. how long it was there, and so on. The Hotel Association has no record of the hotel, and it is not on a list of early hotels in the Canterbury' Museum archives. Does anyone remember anything about the hotel? Until they do, the plate just sits there witji no memories of home attached.