Reporter’s diary

Press, 16 December 1988, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

That’s telling

them!

NORTH Islanders still need us, no matter how hard Aucklanders try to convince them otherwise. Back problems had forced a Christchurch woman to rest at home. During Wednesday’s power cuts, she got a toll call from a friend who produces a nation-wide radio programme in Wellington. Mid-discussion, the woman in Christchurch heard of the dismissal of Roger Douglas over the radio. She told her friend in broadcasting the news and urged her to listen in. “We can’t — there’s a power cut here,” wailed the voice from the heart of the communication network. Minus battery-oper-ated transistors they were helpless. “Never mind,” comforted the South Islander, “you can hear it through my radio,” and she held her set up to the mouthpiece for the benefit of the woman in Aurora House. Any time you need us, you lot up there, we’re happy to help. For a small fee, naturally. Ho-ho-hotline

FOR years children have been able to write to Santa’s North Pole address. When he has ventured into town, they have been able to sit on his lap and lisp into his beard. But now, should they feel the urge to list the toys they dream of getting for Christmas, they can ring Santa on the hotline that Telecom has opened. The patriarchal ear is happy to listen to children’s thoughts on Christmas and

their plans for the holidays, between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. on week-days until next Thursday. The number of Santa’s hotline is Christchurch, 405-000.

Hole-in-one... FOR 20 years Mrs Yvonne Hargreaves has had a memento of her hole-in-one on the Russley Golf Course. Until this week, that is. The same ball that she had used, now mounted on a small wooden stand with a plaque marking the occa-

sion, blew up. Mrs Hargreaves knew nothing of the mini-volcano in her sunporch until she found the inner rubbery strands of the ball lying on the window sill, and the ball looking like a child’s drawing of a human head. High temperatures, and the age of the ball, are thought to have caused the eruption.

... holed MANY readers will have experimented with pocketknives on old golf balls

in order to see if the middle really was hot lead, radioactive material, or whatever myth was current in childhood circles at the time. A spokesman for Spalding said that an old process for making golf balls used a soft or liquid centre which was frozen using liquid nitrogen. In the old process used by Dunlop, about 13.6 metres of thin rubber strands were wound around the frozen core. A moulded cover of balata finished the ball. Techniques are different today, but sometimes groundsmen on older greens find their day getting extra ping and zing when they catch one of the older balls in the mower blades. Pushy lot STILL with golf: a reader has noticed a curious difference between the sexes on the golf course. Women, she says, always push their trundlers in best pram or pushchair mode. Men, risking strains to neck and back, invariably pull their trolleys behind them. “You can tell who’s rocked the cradle,” she snorted. See for yourself. Getting in early A Christchurch store, which sold last year’s leftover Christmas cards cheaply, had run out. “We had them last July, but we certainly don’t have any now,” said a surprised assistant. Ever helpful, he added: “But if you come, back in a week or so, we’ll have last season’s Easter cards in.”

—Jenny Setchell