Reporter’s diary

Press, 13 December 1985, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

There and back STORIES about letters that go astray and end up at their destinations a long time later are legion. Yesterday a woman who lives at the George Manning Home came in with an envelope that she has been saving since 1933. She was working in a Christchurch office of Manchester Unity when a letter arrived from the Auckland office. It had a green half-penny stamp and had been posted on June 16, 1933. It had arrived in Christchurch on September 5, 1933. In the meantime, it had been to London, and it had a London date stamp. The letter contained a receipt for members’ contributions, it was an open letter, and only a half-penny stamp was needed in those days. On the back of the envelope, in pencil, was a message from London: the Manchester Unity letter had been found stuck to another letter there. It was sent back on July 29, with no extra postage attached. The woman thinks it must be rare to have a round-the-world letter with so little postage. Bimbo 2

JIM REEVES, the late, great country and western singer, would have been amused, and maybe a bit saddened, that a radio station in a city the size of Christchurch would hesitate when asked if it had a copy of “Bimbo” that could be played during the slot for older music: From the number of phone calls we had yesterday, it is easy to see that many out 1 -there know where Bimbo has gone — into their record collections. A few of them have the old 78 r.p.m. records by Jim Reeves and the Louisiana Hayride Band. One has a 45 r.p.m. version by Eddie Howard. To give you an idea of some of the other records around at the time, in the 19505, one man Ijas a tape with such titles as “Doggie in the • Window,” “The Little Red Monkey," “Jelly on my Head,” “Kitty in the Basket” and “Where Will the Dimple Be?” Appeal GIVING /LOWERS to hospitals at

Christmas has become a tradition. Paul Morreau, the Sunnyside Hospital chaplain, says that the best days to bring flowers to the main office there are December 19 to December 21 (8 a.m. to 9 p.m.), December 23 (8 a.m. to 9 p.m.) and December 24 (8 a.m. to 5 p.m.). Harsh diet AN ASHBURTON woman has come across what she thinks must be the ultimate in a diet drink. The Diet Refresh packet of Lemon/ Lime drink mix is supposed to make one litre of a drink guaranteed to be low in calories. In this case, the woman says, it seems you only have to think about eating or drinking and you put on weight The packet says that the mix contains 24 kilojoules of energy. The unopened packet is empty. Any drink made from the contents may be low in calories, but pretty tasteless. Retreat beat ON MONDAY, a Beating Retreat and Changing of the Guard ceremony will be held next to Victoria Lake in North Hagley Park to mark Canterbury’s Anniversary Day. Two battalions from the Army’s-Third Task Force will perform an historic ceremony that had its origins in the fifteenth century, when a day’s fighting was ended on a signal by drummers sent out to the four corners of a fortress. The drummers ' married

back through the town, beating retreat. Both sides would then collect thendead and wounded and repair to their camps. The custom lost its significance over the years, but it was revived in 1890 by Sir John Moore. In a ceremony, his troops paid their respects to the fallen. Now the ceremony has become a traditional method of commemorating the fallen in all British Commonwealth armed forces. After the guard-changing ceremony, the retreat beating will start at 6.05 p.m. The main ceremony will start at 5.25 p.m. The blight EVERY WAY he turns these days, a local sufferer of the new technology in his workplace finds himself hindered rather than helped by air these new-fangled ways of doing things. This year he has been smitten by what he calls further evidence of computer blight First he was making hurried arrangements for a threemonth overseas trip. In spite of his need for speed, he was unable to get details about his bank account balances because of what an officer called a “computer crash.” He then tried to pay his telephone rental and toll bill, but was told by the Post Office that was impossible until the Christchurch accounts were dispatched the following month. All New Zealand telephone accounts information was locked into a centralised

computer in the North Island and unable to be released until the set time for each region. The new technology sufferer protested to higher authority, who could only suggest disconnection. The man did not want the reconnection hassle. Finally, in response to louder protest, came the only other option — guess the amount you would owe. He did that, and paid the guessed amount. Yesterday, our sufferer, who has been

waiting since September for a reply from Inland Revenue to his protest about a mistake in the assessment of his taxes, got an answer. He had been told initially that his file could not be found because the computer was down. Finally, the information was extracted manually. His tax demand, which had been hanging like the Sword of Damocles, was halved. The other day, our man drove down to the South Canterbury home town for a respite from life as he is coming to know it. He heard about new plans to computerise things in a place he had always considered free from such foolishness. He thought hard about heading for the hills and going bush. Knows better A CITY worker was playing Father Christmas at a local kindergarten yesterday, and doing a good job of it. He did not let his confidence wane when he overheard what one boy told the headmaster. The boy said he knew their visitor was not the real Father Christmas, because the real one was at Farmers. —Stan Darling