Reporter’s diary

Press, 12 September 1987, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Clan Clelland

PERHAPS this being the year of Scottish achievement has something to do with the chorus of cries from Scots looking for fellow clansmen, sorry, clanspersons. Latest in the groundswell of clan calling are the Clellands. John Clellan Hocknull says that tbe clan chieftainship became dormant in 1717, and since then the name has tended to be aligned with clans such as McNab or McClennan. But, he cries, the Clellands are their own people and "owe allegiance to none save the Royal house and perhaps the Douglas, for whom they managed hunting preserves and forests.” Anyone interested in helping Mr Hocknull raise the clan should write to him, enclosing enough funds to cover return postage — of course at P.O. Box 1350, Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia 5794.

Man or monarch? IT is not often that a

bearded, bespectacled, chubby male reporter is mistaken for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II; but it is perhaps even rarer for New Zealand Post to display a sense of humour. One or the other has to explain an extraordinary event this weekl Dave Wilson, writer of “Wilson’s Week” in “The Press,” got a letter from Nelson. The envelope carried a stamp of Wilson himself, in cartoon form, clipped from a

recent column. Not only had the letter arrived but it had been solemnly franked with an official date-stamp by a Post Office worker with either a Cleesian sense of humour or poor eyesight. Other blueys ISSUING blueys to keep unwanted hotel patrons out of bars is a new idea, but the term “bluey” is used for other than tickets or legal notices. Austra-

Hans used bluey to describe blue-coloured blankets common in the nineteenth century. From this the word became attached to the swag that tramps carried in their blankets. In Tasmania a bluey was a blue, shirtlike garment issued to convicts.

Hopping and hoping BIRDS are traditionally held to be pea-brained twits. But the seagulls on the beach at Wollongong, 64km south of Sydney, are anything but featherbrained. A man was favouring a one-legged seagull with the bulk of his scraps while the rest of the flock hovered jealously by. Then they, too, each folded up a leg under their bellies ■ and hopped about lamely, so that it was impossible to pick the real disabled seagull. Over-all or

nothing

A Royal gardener was

sacked for mowing the lawns at Windsor Castle stark naked. Terry Creedon, aged 22, who had worked at Windsor for 222y 2 years, stripped in front of hundreds of amazed tourists after his foreman rebuked him for wearing torn jeans. “I’m glad I did it,” our London correspondent reports Mr Creedon as saying. “They’re all a bunch of stuffed- shirts. All I had was a rip in the knee. I was so angry because I’m not provided with any overalls or uniform. Even the bloody plumber here wears a collar and tie.” Mr Creedon said he thought that if he couldn’t wear jeans at work he would not wear anything. Continental drift FROM Kissimmee (truly), Florida, came a letter addressed "... 3 Scarborough Road, Christ Church 8, New Zealand, Australia.”

—Jenny Feltham