Reporter’s diary

Press, 13 October 1987, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Variation on vodka NOT everyone in the Soviet Union accepts the moves towards strict control on alcohol. Those not content with their limit of vodka are turning in desperation to alternatives such as “eau de Cologne, toothpaste, boot polish, chloroform and even insect repellent, with appalling consequences,” reported the newspaper, “Izvestia.” The paper also printed a letter from a correspondent who said: "Whenever I read about the ’sobriety’ campaign ... I pour myself a glass of home-made spirit and drink to the health of naive authors and to the downfall of anti-alcohol-ism.” English... DEVOTEES of secondhand bookshop rummaging are well aware of the joys of literary fossicking. For the unconverted, here are two examples culled from recent forays by a reader. On the back cover of a Penguin detective story: “In ‘The Verdict of You All’ there are really no holes to pick; it is an English murder and does our country credit” ...as she was writ STILL in the second-hand bookshop. From the introduction to an Everyman edition of “Roget’s Thesaurus”: “The account of religious terms towards the end of the book has been arranged so that dissenters and nonconformists are no longer

grouped with idolaters, fire-worshippers and other heathens.” Flateral thinking FULL marks for Invention go to an inexperienced waitress in Kings Cross. The “Sydney Morning Herald” reports that the girl, asked to serve flat lemonade, and uncertain how to flatten it; served the drink on a dinner plate with a straw. Lookout, duck! PLANS by the Wellington City Council to use Gollan’s Valley near Lower Hutt, as a site for sewage treatment have ruffled the feathers of the conservation group called Ducks Unlimited (N.Z.). The group is alarmed about the prospect of effluent affecting waterfowl round Lake Kohanapiripiri and Lake Kohangatera in the Gollan’s Valley area; The international group, Ducks Unlimited, claims to be the world’s largest conservation organisation with more than a million members. Ducks Unlimited (N.Z.) has been established only recently, but it has preserved and restored more than 1500 hectares of prime waterfowl habitat. Too true

A Lyttelton reader who telephoned the ‘ Inland Revenue Department was put on hold. While he waited he was serenaded by the strains of "I owe my soul to the company store.”