Reporter’s diary

Press, 3 February 1987, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Duck!

PRISCILLA, the duck who will be liberated this morning after recovering from having an arrow through her chest, has been described as “fighting fit” and “full of hiss.” We hope, for her sake, that that means she remembers the viciousness of certain humans, rather than the subsequent kindness of those who nursed her back to health. “The season” is not too far away, and a degree of wariness might serve her well.

Proof of the

pudding

“DE MINIMIS non curat lex,” intoned Judge Hay in the Christchurch District Court last week, quoting an old legal maxim, and giving its usual translation: “The law does not concern itself with trifles.” He was dismissing a case which, broadly speaking, revolved around the definition of fresh cream. Most judgeSz-wait in vain for a lifetime'for a chance like that. T

Common .

FRENCH consumers are to be enticed into buying Italian fruit juice during the next (northern) summer,. by a television commercial set in an English public school. The logic of that escapes us, but we recognise the good sense of the French advertising agency in coming to Christchurch to do the filming. After all, genuine English public schools are snowbound at this time of year, and Christchurch provides plenty of settings that could pass for the real thing.

... Marketeering THERE IS one snag, however. Mrs Louisa Davies, the Christchurch woman who has been contracted to provide the wardrobe for the commercial, cannot find enough straw boaters and striped blazers for the “school uniforms.” Anyone who can help is asked to telephone her at 482-312. The commercial will be filmed, possibly at, the Arts Centre, on FehAiary 18-21.

Regards to

wotsisname

POSTIES get some odd mail — perhaps none odder than a card, addressed to "Mrs Hedgehog,” from an eight-year-old on holiday at Takaka. Before going away with her parents and sister, she had been an avid follower of a new family of hedgehogs on her grandparents’ property at Avonhead. “Dear Hedgehogs,” she writes, “we’re having a lovely time in takaka. I am sleeping on the top bunk. We found the golden Beaches, lots of love, Tasha.” The sting comes in the postscript: “Say bellow to Grama and Grandad.” Not Right LAST WEEK this column referred to Archbishop Desmond Tutu as “the Right Reverend,” instead of “the Most Reverend,” to which he is entitled as an Anglican Archbishop. The reader who pointed this out said that he would forgive “The Press” the error “this time.” Most kind. —Nigel Malthus.