Reporter’s diary

Press, 19 August 1985, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

End nigh? A CHRISTCHURCH man has long kept these lines, sent to him by a relative in Scotland. They are said to be from a 500-year-old tombstone in Essex: “When pictures move about with movement free (television?); When ships like fishes swim the sea (submarines?); When men outstripping birds can scan the sky (aeroplanes?); Then half the world deep drenched in blood shall lie.” He finds the whole thing vaguely disturbing. True grit WE ARE assured that this exchange occurred on manoeuvres recently between an Army sergeant and a recruit who was none too happy with the soup he had been served from a field kitchen. He asserted that it contained sand. “Are you complaining about a bit of sand in your soup?” barked the sergeant. “Yes, sir,” said the recruit. Sergeant: “Did you join the Army to serve your country or to complain about the food?” Recruit: “I joined the army to serve my country, sir, not to eat it.” Day of the flies... M. FERGUSON, a reader who lives in the country, at Springs Junction, is most concerned about what he sees as a bigger-than-usual invasion of blowflies. He writes: “I think it is time our Government did something to help in getting rid of these pests. I suggest that every able-bodied person who receives the unemploy.ment benefit should be presented with a fly-swat and

instructions to get at least five blowflies a day.” (Of course, wings would have to be produced as proof of death.) “In time, I feel sure, we would rid our country of flies, and the scheme would go a long way towards preventing the crime that is supposedly caused by unemployment,” Mr Ferguson said. ... and fly-less days A COLLEAGUE, Paul Corrigan, who was in North America last month, was astounded by the absence of flies in both the United States and Canada. Not even in the cities, with all the usual city smells and the weather hot and sticky, was there a sign of the little black beasts. It was ideal fly weather, too, because it had not rained in California and Washington state for 45 days. The only flies he saw on the whole trip were near the summit of Grouse Mountain, Vancouver. They were horseflies, nasty, aggressive little brutes. A tormented child was thrashing about like a windmill, trying to beat them off, but this only seemed to spur them to greater efforts. Could it be; our man asks, that the pollution in North America is so bad that it has killed off all the flies except those on Grouse Mountain? Stickers inside WHEN SOME Queensland shoppers open home appliances to check them, they find stickers protesting against the felling of a rain forest. Eight environmental groups are pasting stickers wherever they can, although they were meant only for /

use on cars. Email, Ltd, manufacturer and distributor of such brands as Frigidaire, Westinghouse, and Kelvinator, is getting hit by the protest as consumers are urged not to buy their products. Email recently took over the company that is cutting down the Downey Creek rain forest, the last major lowland rain forest on the Queensland coast. The stickers say: “Don’t put Downey rain forest through the wringer. Boycott Email.” Headaches

MOVES BY the Indonesian authorites to make motorcyclists wear crash helmets have run into problems. Nobody, it seems, has clearly defined what actually constitutes a crash helmet. Jakarta police had to reprimand an elderly man for riding along the city’s main street with what was described as a kitchen basin on his head. Military helmets and construction site “hard hats” are proving popular. Problems have also been caused by a somewhat haphazard imposition of the new laws: crash helmets are compulsory in some streets and not in nothers. The police continue to wear crash helmets and sunglasses at all times — even when sitting in a patrol car under the heat of the noonday sun. Good start

A READER’S daughter who wrote to a French magazine seeking a pen pal found one. The letter in reply, beautifully written, began: “Good morning, expensive Rachel...”

—Peter Comer