Reporter’s diary

Press, 14 January 1986, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Homey touch NEW TECHNOLOGY and all the high tech refinements of today’s workplace cut no ice with one city office worker, who has been at pains to make herself at home on the job. She is reportedly the envy of those around her who thought there was no way to resist the wave of progress. With her lamp, teapot and thriving plant, .she may have started a trend in an office that is not yet wired into all the bleeps and bloops of the machine age. The desk lamp is there to help cut down the glare from overhead fluorescent lamps. There is an electric typewriter, but even that instrument seems a little old-fashioned these days. Another he A LOWER HUTT woman, who read about the “he” medical certificate for a woman discharged from Christchurch Women’s Hospital, is in the electronics business, and secretary of the local branch of the New Zealand Institute of Electricians. She remembered the certificate which arrived when she joined the institute as an associate member. All the wording in the certificate, aside from her name, referred to her as a male. She knew of women electricians in the Hutt Valley and

Southland, and she wrote to the institute to ask permission to add the letter ‘s’ where appropriate to make the certificate refer to her. She got that permission, and a promise that new certificates will be printed to cover all the possibilities. Hitching COMPETITION among hitchhikers must be getting tough on the West Coast, says a man who was returning from the Kumara races the other day. He saw a young Canadian hitchhiker and a woman companion at the Kumara Junction, trying to get a lift south towards Haast. The man was waving a $lO note, but he was still having trouble attracting a ride. On the job

THE BRITISH Transport Minister, Lynda Chalker, takes a lively interest in her portfolio. A truck driver in Nottinghamshire was stuck in traffic. Behind him was the Minister, who got out to hand him a note. It said that his lights were dirty. The culprit

VISITING his son at Little Wanganui recently, a Christchurch man left his car for three nights before returning to it. Inside was a copy of the "Nelson Evening Mail” ; |that had a long article jabout his son’s at-

tempts to set up a small school in the West Coast community. The man was surprised and annoyed to find that the newspaper had been torn apart even though nothing else inside the car seemed to have been disturbed. Looking further, he found the shredded pieces inside the spare tyre well. An industrious field mouse had taken it there for a nest. The mouse was nowhere in evidence, and how it got into the car in the first place is a mystery. Say what?

A CHRISTCHURCH man went to a dental surgeon the other day to have an abcess taken care of, and was given a list of instructions about what to do to aid recuperation after he got home. He returned to work with one side of his face puffed up because of the local anaesthetic, and had a hard time getting his mouth around the words that usually came easily. He was just getting used to his new mumble, when a friend rang and asked how he was getting on. She asked if he had read the instructions, and he admitted that he had not made it to the end of the list. The last thing to do was to take the gauze wad out of his mouth. He did that, and his normal speech was miraculously restored.

—Stan Darling