Reporter’s diary

Press, 13 April 1989, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Meet and right... LAST Thursday’s Diary item about the confusion over the pronunciation of mints and mince reminded a reader that some years ago in St Albans, adjacent shops were owned by Bromley the butcher, and Broome the greengrocer (fruit and veg. to us). His uncle went into Broome’s and said: “I’ll have a savoy,” to which the assistant replied: “You’ll have to go next door to the butcher’s for that." When he pointed to what he wanted, the young woman said, “Oh, you mean a cabbage!” Sorry — wrong number STILL chortling with delight, our chap in Greymouth recounted the tale of the Telecom telephone installer who was sent from Greymouth to a rural part of the Grey Valley to connect a new telephone. The house owner had told the office that he would not be at home, that the house would be locked, but that access could be gained through lifting a sheet of iron on the partly completed roof. Message

received and understood. The technician arrived at the house, climbed on to the roof, lifted the sheet of iron, did the wiring and installed the new telephone. As he left the property, he was approached by a man who asked if he was ready to install the telephone in his house. He had managed to come home early to open the door, he said, so it would no longer be necessary to climb on the roof and move the sheet of iron — on the house on the opposite side of the road. ... so to do THEY were new to the district and had just taken over the local corner shop. A woman, born in the North of England, entered and said: “Ah, ioh,” They beamed at her and replied "hallo.” Again, “Ah, ioh,” and again a chorus of “Hallo.” It was some time before it dawned on them that what the customer wanted was half a loaf. Just wondering THOSE in our "we-were-wondering” department were curious to know if the policeman who locked his car keys in the police

car in Cathedral Square yesterday managed to retrieve them unaided, or . did he have to call for assistance from a passing felon? Trolley tango ONE of the more unusual victims of Tuesday’s wintery day was a shopping trolley which picked a fight with a car. A man saw an elderly woman begin to drive out of a Shirley supermarket carpark just as a gust of wintj blew the trolley against the driver’s door, where it stuck fast. Unable to see what was wrong, she continued to drive for about 200 m tethered to the clattering trundler, until rescued by the onlooker. Ancient recipes FRENCH gourmets are nothing if not adventurous. A French food company is marketing vacuum packs of firstcentury recipes by Marcus Gavius Apicius, the Roman gourmet who taught Pliny the pleasures of flamingo tongue. After two years of testing by Chef Renzo Pedrazzini, fish stew, stuffed duck and boar meat in hot

sauce are about to be unleashed on curious palates. Sadly, Apicius’s more adventurous dishes, like boiled ostrich, and dormouse stuffed with pork, remain as unmarketable as they were 2000 years ago. Apicius poisoned himself in A.D. 37, bankrupted for his extravagance. Rainy season IF we thought it was wet in Christchurch on Tuesday, pity the Australians who have had an even sloshier time of it lately. Take Mrs Alexandra Rex, of Leura, who waded through yet another downpour to her letterbox. The “Sydney Morning Herald” reports that she was disgruntled, to say the least, to find that the only mail was a $2BO bill from the Water Board for excess water. End in itself SEEN in Springfield Road, a bumper sticker to end all bumper stickers: It said, simply, “Bum-purrr sticker,” and was illustrated with what can only be described as an electrified cat. —Jenny Setchell