Reporter’s diary

Press, 25 July 1986, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

slip

IDLY TOYING with a new packet of paper clips, a Christchurch office worker began to count the contents. The label promised 200, but the tally stopped at 165. So he counted another packet. Only 158 clips. Still with nothing better to do, he counted three more bundles, which all fell short of 200 with 168, 175, and 180. Hmmm, he thought. Checking with the branch manager of the manufacturing company we found that the unusual shortfall would have most probably occurred because of a minor and temporary hitch in the counterweight monitoring at the plant in Auckland. The company (The Rcyal New Zealand Foundation for the Blind) willingly offered to make up the shortfall.

Containers needed TOPS, BLACK bottoms and oasis blocks are needed by the North Canterbury Centre of the Red Cross. Every September the meals-on-wheels drivers deliver spring posies to their regular customers, and they need about 800 containers in which to arrange the fresh and dried flowers. Oasis a green, hard

foam block which florists use as a base for flower stems; the black bottoms are found on large plastic drink bottles; and tops are those which come on aerosol cans, in various colours. Those who can help by providing any of these are asked to give them to the Red Cross, 33 Cashel Street. Radio request THE NORTH Canterbury Amateur Radio Club will soon celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. The club wrote to the Rangiora Borough Council to ask permission to hold a display in the borough council foyer as part of the celebrations. Naturally, it will be a static display.

Watergate

windfalls

REMEMBER the cast of the Watergate saga? The naughty boys are having a ball, reports Hugh Nevlll from Washington. John Erlichman writes popular novels in New Mexico, when he is not fishing in the afternoons. He earns more than he ever did as a top aide to President Nixon. H. R. Haldeman lives on a large estate in Santa Barbara, California, and owns horses, is a partner in a real estate investment firm and in several steakhouses. John Dean (who was Ninon’s

legal counsel) is an investment banker in Los Angeles, with “more clients than I can handle,” E. Howard Hunt continues to write thrillers in Florida, and lectures, on terrorism. Gordon Liddy owns a security firm. Hard 5e11...

BIG SOFT-DRINK companies may be facing their stiffest competition yet. The Milk Marketing Board in Britain has launched a new canned drink called "Milk Can,” which will be sold alongside other soft drinks in supermarkets, chemists, newsagents, petrol stations and off-licences in southern England. Milk is already Britain’s • most popular “soft” drink, with more than 200 million litres drunk “straight” each year, according to “Milk Producer” magazine. The improved UHT process is asserted to retain the taste of fresh milk. Recycling cycles

CYCLE RACING could almost be described as a blood sport, especially when the cycles being used are more ‘ than a century old, and high off the ground in comparison with modern, 10-speed contraptions. Riders tend to fall off. This will be demonstrated today at

12.30 p.m. when a team from the Arts Centre and the Court Theatre challenge the media to a race from Cathedral Square, down Worcester Street and back. The tricky bit will be staying on the three penny-farthings, one bone-shaker and one “Sociable,” which will be lent for the occasion by the Cycle Trading Company. Those who survive the race will be given a hot toddy; those who do not will be taken to hospital. It’s a rough world out there. What went wrong? DESPERATE for something to say during the televised broadcast of the Royal Wedding, the commentator mentioned the gates of Buckingham Palace, called the Australian Gates and the South African gates (neither of which were boycotted by the crowd, eager to clamber on anything which might give a better view). Curious to discover more, we burrowed into both books in our library and found a fascinating snippet When he opened South Africa House on June 22, 1933, King George V, the Queen’s grandfather, described it as “a monument to concord and amity.”

—Jenny Clark