Reporter’s diary

Press, 2 May 1988, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Many thanks CHRISTCHURCH is full of people who collect chicken wishbones for no particular reason. The bride-to-be who needed 70 bones for her wedding has been overwhelmed by the response from kindly readers who have given what appears to be their lifetime accumulations of wishbones. As one donor of a vast number of bones wrote: “I am rather horrified when I realise how many I have consumed, admittedly with help of visitors sometimes.” The bride has been deeply impressed by the number of people who have taken time and trouble to drop in their wishbone bundles, which range from lots of up to 100 to a single bone in an envelope with “Good Luck” written on the outside. Organ tribute IN the Spanish town of El Ferrol, the Mayor, Dr Ula, recently unveiled a memorial statue to the liver. During his working, life as a doctor and as the one who does post-mor-tem examinations in the town, he has seen hundreds of livers “that were tortured by cocktails, wine, tranquillisers, and other medicine.” Every

day the liver has to contend with such poisons, he said. The granite sculpture, which was financed by the town council and a bank, is intended to give credit to this “unpretentious and unselfish organ.” Cook recalled STILL with oddball memorials, consider one that will be erected to commemorate Captain Cook at his birthplace. The planned sculpture is a nine-metre high leaning bottle. Council officials in the northern English city of Middlesbrough are spending $171,000 on the sculpture, by an American pop artist, Claes Oldenburg. The structure will resemble a bottle that has been washed ashore. The framework it will lean on will be shaped like writing, to represent the idea of a message in a bottle. Oldenburg said the idea came from Cook’s “three great voyages. It is, after all, the bottle washed up on the shore that says so much about the great distances and time in the communications of Cook’s day.”

Fast bucks A cash-dispensidg machine went beserk last

week. The machine, in Manhattan, New York City, dealt out extra money for no extra charge. Customers who asked the machine for $4O got $160; those who asked for $6O got $240, and so on. The customers were charged only for amounts they had requested. The machine was substituting $2O notes for $5 notes. A queue of eager cardholders soon formed. The bank said it would try' to trace the customers who reaped windfalls, once it determined how much was lost and who was making withdrawals while the machine was in its benevolent mood. Childlike PRESIDENT Reagan is besieged by former aides determined to publish and reveal all about the inner, workings of the White' House. One man, who served the President for more than 20 years, has joined the chorus with comments about Reagan’s innocence. “He never looked at the front page (of a newspaper) first," he wrote. “He would turn instead to the comics, a childhood habit he never shed. Once I heard him complain because a paper carried the Wizard of Id

and you could no longer find papers that had Andy Gump (a folksy 1930 s character).” No solution AFTER almost four years compiling a 50,400-word crossword puzzle to break his own world record, a Belgian has given up. The Press Association reports that Roger Bouckaert, a prison warder, has spent five hours a day and every holiday since July, 1984, looking up Dutch words for a puzzle 30m long and 53cm high. “I. am absolutely fed up with it now,” said Bouckaert. He completed his previous record puzzle of 25,283 words in February, 1984, then took a few months off before beginning the second attempt. The new crossword contains 26,053 vertical and 24,347 horizontal words. Washing destructions THE label on a skirt made by the New Zealand company, Escape, says: “For best results, machine or hand warm wash, cold rinse, short spin ... line dry. For not such good results, drag behind skateboard, bike or car, thru puddles. Blow dry from neck on roof rack.”