Reporter’s diary

Press, 25 August 1988, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Punts... FOR a new version of the Cheshire Cat, consider the punts on the Avon. Promotional material for the craft, which were part of the Thomas Edmonds Restaurant operation, is everywhere. Look in almost any tourist brochure and you will see the Avon, adorned with a punt, punter, and puntee. The cover of the 1988 Telephone Directory shows one; Dame Anne Hercus has been pictured in one; a punt is on the front of the Christchurch and Canterbury Visitors’ Guide and will soon be seen on television as part of a “You ain’t seen nothing yet” commercial by Leeza Gibbons. ... need punters BUT the punts do not work during the winter, and they may not be afloat by the start of the summer, contrary to information in tourist brochures. The punts are for sale. But hang on before you dash out to buy a couple for fun: they come with the restaurant as an entire business, so any buyer will have to be as adept at manoeuvring silver service as punting poles. Meanwhile, the Canterbury Promotion Council is counting on the river craft working by September 1. Or else the council may have to consider blithely extending the winter season. Con-munica tions TELEPHONE rentals in Christchurch will increase by an average of $6.44 in November. To compensate, Telecom is reducing the cost of toll calls. Goody, goody, you cry. But wait. A reader with a smouldering calculator has been at work. It now costs $4.32 for three minutes to call Auckland; that is, $1.44 a minute. The new charge will be $1.31 a minute, which is a reduction of 13 cents (gosh). To gain any advantage over the increase in rental, you would have to make 49 one-minute calls to Auckland each month. The reader sums it up: “Looks like a Telecon j0b...”

Sign language

SEVERAL people have drawn our attention to the sign on New Brighton Road reading “Aged pedestrians,” which has scrawled underneath ‘‘so points.” One informant wants to know: if you get three, is it a geri-’at-trick?

Nitty and gritty CLINT Eastwood’s restaurant, named Dirty Harry after a character once played by the actor, has been closed because it was too dirty. Inspectors found that the kitchen at the Hog’s Breath Inn had inadequate refrigeration, insanitary conditions, im-

proper food storage, structural problems that made it difficult to clean the restaurant, and an "extremely dirty” kitchen, said a spokesman. As that celebrated maitre d’, Basil Fawlty, would say, “Apart from that, everything all right?”

Fingered food IT is not always the restaurant or food bar which is responsible for a health risk — sometimes it is the customer. A despairing reader wants to get people who serve themselves at food bars and lunch places to use tools, not fingers. By law, food tongs must be supplied,

but in some eateries, almost no-one uses them. One coffee shop says it has given up trying to get people to use tongs, instead of pawing the food. Is this the origin of that nauseating expression so beloved of clubs, churches, and societies, “finger food”? Hands off

THANKS to “The Financial Times” for this extract, taken from a hotel leaflet in a Bangkok hotel with a list of dos and don’ts for guests: “Please do not associate with solicitors around the hotel.” —Jenny Setchell