Reporter’s diary

Press, 17 March 1987, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Hurry along,

please

WINDIES cricketers should not push their luck too far by using delaying tactics before coming on to the field — the show can still go on, as witnessed during a bizarre start to the second day of a Kent-Middlesex match in 1963. Middlesex, batting, had nine men absent. One of the two men present, White, was in with 43 not out, but the other man had already been dismissed. White took the field, and after waiting patiently for two minutes, the umpire declared the Middlesex innings closed. Middlesex then had to muster a fielding side: their twelfth man was generously permitted to keep wicket, the only two team members present had to bowl, while Kent lent them eight fielding substitutes. After three overs, the rest of the Middlesex team arrived to explain their lateness: neither pique nor tactics — a mere traffic jam.

Wife strife

THREE seething American women who have just discovered they are all married to the same man have decided to hunt him down — with song. The trio, called “Ethel and the Shameless Hussies,” came together after tax authorities tipped them off about their husband’s duplicity. Now the group is on the road searching audiences for him, as well as trying to win a recording contract with songs like “My Boyfriend’s Back” and “A Woman’s Drinking Song.” Wife Kacey Jones says “We want him in jail. We even hear that he’s got a fourth wife. If it’s true, we just hope she’s a tenor.” Spud sponsors

THE HUMBLE spud will gain kudos at the 1988 Olympics. The United States Potato Board is sponsoring the American women gymnasts’ team, and has got permission to use the United States Gymnastic Association logo in its advertising.

Greater odds

NO-ONE HAS yet been able to tell us the possible odds against cars with consecutive number plates parking together in a city like Christchurch. But whatever they are, Mrs Ellen O’Donovan thinks the odds would be far greater for two numbers coinciding in a European city. That, in fact, is what happened during a tour of Europe in 1985 when Mrs O’Donovan's British-registered car parked beside a consecutive number plate in Vienna. The O’Donovans waited for the owners and together they drank a toast to the long arm of coincidence. Saint's day TODAY is St Patrick’s Day, that intrepid Irish saint who returned to his native land to convert the heathen. It seems he got a little carried away on occasion, and legend has it that while preaching a sermon on the patience

and suffering of Christ to King Aengus, Patrick accidentally drove his staff through the king’s foot. Whoops, said Patrick; but the king did not breathe a word, thinking that this was the moral of the sermon. When Patrick realised the awful faux pas he had committed, it is said he prayed fervently, and the king’s foot was miraculously cured.

Thanks a lot, son CHILDREN can be too helpful, as Mr Rubin Dexter of Apple Heights, California, found to his cost. The “Daily Telegraph” reported that Mr Rubin was stopped for speeding by the Bayside State Patrol and asked by them if he had any drugs. He denied possession, but was arrested after Happy, his three-year-old son, said “Daddy, don’t let the fellas down, I got some,” and took three packets of cocaine out of his pocket.

—Jenny Feltham