Reporter’s diary

Press, 19 April 1989, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Elementary error WEST Coasters have the game of “Confuse A Customer” up to Olympic standards. The account in the Diary last week of a telephone mistakenly installed, moved Rosemary Doyle to relate her story of the effort to put a second-hand stove in their holiday house at Moana, Lake Brunner. The stove was ordered from the Greymouth shop and arrangements made for the installation, including the key to their house to be collected from the store. When the Doyles arrived at Moana, no stove. The Doyles rang the shop, which assured them the stove had been installed. Most of Easter was spent asking house-to-house if anyone had seen their stove until the answer came from their nextdoor neighbours. These people said they were most embarrassed, as they had let their house to friends who had kindly put a new stove in for them — but they really preferred their old one. The old stove was finally found, and the “new”

swapped to its rightful owners. One puzzle remains — how did the key to one house open the door to the other? Nicely putt REMEMBER the horse called Business in yesterday’s Diary? Now we learn of a secretary for a headmaster who is a keen golfer, who tells callers that her boss is not on the links, but “away on a course for handicapped teachers.” After all that DESIGN consultants brought in to imbue London’s Natural History Museum with some zing to its image, looked at changing the name. Possibilities mooted were Museum of the Living. World, Museum of the Living Planet, Museum of Life on Earth. The final recommendation, as confirmed by the corporate marketing manager, is “No better name than ■Natural History Museum can be found.” The consultants urged the adoption of the name “Natural

History Museum.” How much did it cost to find that out, we wonder? Wait for it OH, golly, can this be true? Topless waiters at the Christchurch Town Hall? For the International Secretaries’ Day breakfast celebration on April 26, with bubbly, and Doug Caldwell and Helen Greening and 91 Stereo ZM and all? Gosh. Oh, I see. The men from the Town Hall waiters’ corps will be the ones to lose their shirts. It should be worth it for the lucky secretary who wins a $lOOO spending spree around town. Feminist “UPDATE,” the magazine of the National Union of Students in Scotland, provides this remarkable information: “This year the election of National Women’s Committee are being held through caucus that takes place at conference, so the women’s committee will be made up of nine places as shown below: two lesbian,

one disabled, one Jewish, two black, one Irish, one woman with child (ren), one open ...” Down the tuber ALTHOUGH she is an Australian gerierally converted to New Zealand life, Helen indulges in products made, or grown, in Australia to appease pangs of homesickness occasionally. One weekly purchase she never misses is a packet of McCabe’s potato cakes. Ringing her father, Old Jack, in the homeland, Helen mentioned how much she enjoyed eating the Australian-made potato cakes. “Those? Oh, don’t buy those, they’re no good,” snorted Old Jack, himself a primary producer, “they import potatoes from New Zealand to make those.” Jealousy will get you everywhere SEEN parked in Durham Street, a Suzuki Swift, with the registration plate lENVYU. The colour? Oh, what a pity, not green.

—Jenny Setchell