Reporter’s diary

Press, 22 December 1986, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Live medical aid

LIVE SATELLITE television transmissions of medical operations will be used to teach medical students and to demonstrate the latest surgery techniques at important medical conferences. The London Press Service re-

pots that Video South, the company pioneering the idea in England, recently made what is thought to be the first such live transmission of operations in a West German hospital, to a conference of consultant surgeons at London’s Charing Cross and Westminster medical

school. The transmissions showed the use of lasers to burn away tumours — demonstrations which otherwise would have never have been seen in Britain because of the difficulty in transporting the equipment. Jaundiced view A POLICEMAN’S lot is not a happy one, says the song. And it is a feeling echoed by the boys in blue who put the following on the noticeboard at the Bell Street police station in Wanganui: “We, the willing, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have now done so much for so long, for so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.” Water, water everywhere AN ENTERPRISING businessman can make a fad out of anything. Now it is drinking water. On Rodeo Drive, in Beverley Hills, Hollywood, a “water bar”

has opened, offering 51 • varieties of the liquid. There are, say the promoters, both still and sparkling types, from 18 countries, including France, Russia, Japan, and Britain. Warning A BOOKLET of dos and don’ts for troops in Oman covers almost every contingency, suh as do not stare at Omani women or sit with the soles of the feet turned towards any of the locals, which is a great insult. A footnote provides an interesting rider: “You may well encounter a sheep or goat in the middle of nowhere. It is not lost and it does belong to someone. Do not convert it into chops, or else you will pay the owner the going rate, around 100 Riyals or £175.” Verbose

THIRTY years ago Jose Rumazo of Ecuador began writing a poem. Recently published in seven volumes, the poem contains 230,000 verses, says

the "Southland Times,” to prove they are interested in culture in the deep south. But to return to epic poetry: “Parusia” may be the longest poem in history. The former champion, a 2200-year-old Sanskrit epic called Mahabharata, contains 190,000 verses. Dante’s “Divine Comedy” has a mere 30,000 verses. Fiction on fiction ECONOMY WITH the truth is practised by those who write the wonderfully exagerated blurbs on the dust covers of books and in publishers’ catalogues. Just how facile some can be was demonstrated when a page proof from Heineman’s forthcoming catalogue for April, 1987, waxed lyrical about England’s cricket tour of Australia, by Peter Roebuck. The blurb says the book is “more than” a daily diary of the tour, claiming it is “frank, witty, and above all, penetrating.” This fanciful judgment was passed before a single word of the book had been written.

—Jenny Feltham.