Reporter’s diary

Press, 7 May 1986, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Mega-veges WHOPPING EXAMPLES of garden produce seen recently at the Canterbury Horticultural Hall are tiddlers in comparison with some mammoth vegetables listed in the Guinness Book of Records. The heaviest pumpkin of all time is claimed by the book to be a gigantic 277.6 kg beauty which won the Half Moon pumpkin festival in California in 1984. The record for the United Kingdom is a 199.5 kg pumpkin grown by R. A. Butcher at Stockbridge, Hampshire, in 1984. These weights make even Cinderella’s stagecoach seem credible. Speeding ROAD TESTING the new Rover 800 was done by some British Leyland y

executives in Devon. Several models were transported under black tarpaulins. Then they hit the road, at top speed. The speed was a bit too top for a traffic officer who stopped one of the executives for speeding. He had been going fast, the company admitted, but not as fast as his chairman, who had just passed him and was roaring into the distance when the hapless executive was told to pull over. Mystery line WORKERS IN innercity office blocks have been fascinated by a nylon line which has been draped across buildings, trees and streets in Christchurch for about a month. Very like a lightweight fishing line, the nylon is difficult to trace, and only

in certain lights can sections of the line be seen. It travels from “The Press” building in the Square to Carruca House; then from the building next to the BNZ, it crosses Hereford Street, over a building and the City Mall, above a tree by the Stewart Fountain, then across Colombo Street to the McKenzie and Willis arcade. It may not stop there, but its beginning and end are as mysterious as its purpose. A dentist in the BNZ building speculates that the city council has either been flying its kite, or fishing for compliments. Job seekers

MORE THAN a third of those seeking jobs through the free “Employment wanted” column in “The Press” every Wednesday,

find them. The Canterbury Resource Centre secretary, Chrissy Terpstra, said that in the last 12 months the centre had handled about 1200 advertisements from skilled and unskilled people wanting, work. Many of the 20 to 30 applicants each week are school leavers, but professional people such as accountants, lawyers, engineers, and nurses also advertise in the column. Temple tourism MILITANT MONKS in Kyoto have re-opened their temples to tourists after being on strike since December. The nine main Buddhist temples in the ancient Japanese capital were shut in protest against a new city tax, which would have inentrance fees, K.

and forced the temples to disclose their total receipts each year. Thirty local shops and restaurants, which were losing a significant part of their business because of the strike, encouraged the resumption of the temple tourism. Mint condition MORE THAN $500,000 worth of gold may be recovered from the walls of the historic 86-year-old mint, in Perth. About 1000 ounces of gold vapourised or was spilled in the mint’s early days, when refining equipment was less refined. Attempts will be made to recover the gold by scraping down the walls and burning timber in the building when production in the old mint stops. —Jenny Clark.