Reporter’s diary

Press, 30 August 1985, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

The moat RESIDENTS of a group of flats near Church Corner are getting sick and tired of their wildlife lake. Neighbours do not think much of it, either. In the last week, two ducks living on the lake have been raising such a ruckus at night that it is hard for some of the tenants to sleep. This is added to the problems of those who cannot keep cars at their back doors without getting wet feet. The lake in the car-park of the Curletts Road flats is there because of a drainage problem the residents are having trouble getting fixed. When it rains, the lake gets even bigger than it is now. Some children built a lakeside miamia so they could fantasise taking pot shots at the ducks. One woman’s friends always ask her how things are going with the moat. The water makes it hard to sit in some of the lounges because the sun’s glare is so fierce. Some of the residents say they have to laugh about it because the problem has dragged on so long, but a neighbour said he was getting annoyed by the water’s smell. The Paparua County Council knows about the problem and has told the landowner to get it dried up. Elmwood flyers THOSE who were flying kites for more than two hours at Elmwood Park

yesterday have been given a vote of thanks by a woman who watched the kites swoop, swirl and tug at their strings. She was thoroughly enchanted by the spectacle as she watched from her bed in St George’s Hospital. Missed out THERE MAY be few people complaining about missing an official speech, but if more had wanted to hear words of the PostmasterGeneral, Mr Hunt, at the Horticultural Hall yesterday, they would have been out of luck. About 200 people were queued up outside waiting to enter the Stampex ’B5 exhibition as Mr Hunt prepared to cut a ribbon inside. Only about 40 people were able to crowd into a small room off the entrance being used. Double doors into the hall are closed during the exhibition. One onlooker suggested that it would have been better to let everyone in, and have Mr Hunt speak to a captive audience from the hall’s stage. Descriptions

IF THE owner of a four-wheel-drive vehicle being

nabbed by parking officers believed the descriptions on his parking tickets, he would think he owned several vehicles. In the same week, three successive tickets said the vehicle was a van, a ute, and a truck. They were all wrong. The van/ute/truck is registered as a car. Health coverage ANYONE looking at a list of health-related conferences in Christchurch this week might think the city has the field just about covered. We have the New Zealand Association of Natural Family Planning, the Winter School on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, the New Zealand Child Care Association’s annual conference, the first joint conference of Australian and New Zealand Psychological Societies, a New Zealand training conference on Disability and Sexuality and a conference of the New Zealand Multiple Birth Association. Tombstone clues A SEMI-RETIRED London cab driver visited his father’s grave in the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw re-

cently and was surprised to find his name painted on the headstone, along with the names of brothers and sisters who had died without having official burials during World War 11. Samson Altman was also surprised to find that the grave was well tended, since the Polish city’s Jewish community had dwindled to a few hundred people. Most graves were neglected. The cemetery warden told Mr Altman that a man from Sweden visited the grave a couple of years ago, and wrote the names of Samson and the rest of the Altman family on the tomb. The father had died before the war, and the rest of the family were assumed to have died in the war and concentration camps. The earlier cemetery visitor’s name was Jacob Altman, one of Samson’s older brothers. He was living in the Goteborg area of Sweden. Samson sent off a telegram, and got a return telephone call in Yiddish from the brother he had not seen in 46 years. Another brother, Israel, was also alive and in Sweden. They had survived the concentration camps. Samson had joined the Polish Free Army under British command and

made it to Palestine, then settled in London after the war. He had tried all the ways he knew to trace his family, but had been told each time that the entire family had perished in the Warsaw ghetto. This week, the surviving family was reunited in London, along with children, grand-chil-dren and sisters-in-law. Now Samson is going to have his name removed from his father’s tombstone as quickly as possible. Good thought THEY SAY it is the thought that counts, and in this case it will have to be. A Christchurch man sorting through some old clothes last week spared a thought for a friend in a developing country. He wrapped some of the clothes and took them to the Post Office on the back of his bicycle. Back they came when he found it would cost $l7 in postage. They were worth only about $59, and he wanted them insured for that amount.. The parcel weighed a little more than 3kg. His thought for a friend still lies wrapped up in a brown paper parcel at home.