Reporter’s diary

Press, 16 May 1989, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Dictionary game

WHAT is the Dictionary parlour game? (as quoted in this column yesterday) cry those who didn’t know. Briefly, it is a party version of Call My Bluff. Using a dictionary, someone selects an unusual word and spells it out to the others in a group. They write 'down what they believe it means, or they invent a reasonably credible definition. Their answers, and the correct meaning, are put in a hat then redrawn. As the definitions are read out, one by one, the players choose which they think is correct. Points go to those who chose the correct definition; for the player who supplied the original meaning and fooled the other players; and for the people whose (invented) definitions were chosen as the “correct” one. Supporters will say that besides being a fun way to discover new words, it teaches that even friends can lie through their teeth for the sake of winning a friendly parlour game. Silly season YOU can tell it’s school holidays by the number of wet jokes doing the rounds. Our favourite for the week: What’s the difference between a water buffalo and a bison? A: You can’t wash your hands in a water buffalo. Stitch in time A recent article about embroidery depicting historic buildings in Christchurch prompted Mrs Beulah Behrnes to hunt out her own cross-stitch work that she completed 55 years ago. The black-and-white picture of the Cathedral was copied from a transfer and includes fragmented etchings of old buildings such as Warner’s Hotel in the background. Mrs Behrnes, who made the picture when she was 20 as a birthday present for her late sister, said she used to “sit for hours doing embroidery for glory boxes. They don’t do that any more,” she said. “Now girls just go out and buy what they want.”

Pigs do fly No. 2 THE cat that leaps into

fridges (Reporter’s Diary, May 13) should team with a Burman who rules an Avonhead household. This cat opens fridges, to the ecstasy of the family’s elderly dachshund, whose stomach has no memory. While the cat consumes a fair portion, it is nothing compared to the gorging of the dog. His best effort to date was half a dogmeat sausage at one sitting. The desperate family found a solution which may help owners of similarly incorrigible animals. Two stick-on hooks, one on the fridge wall, and the other on the fridge door, hooked together by an elastic garter, have so far foiled the ravenous

beasties. The cat has turned its attention to the problem of opening doors with round knobs. Sound familiar? NOW, something for insomniacs. • Derek Overton has been trying to trace the origin of these few lines ... “The white road, the chalk road, the road that leads down to the sea ... ” He believes the lines are from a poem he learned as a boy at Queen Elizabeth I Grammar School in Alford, Lincolnshire. . He brought some of the poem with him to New Zealand when he immigrated but has lost the paper, and the poem with it. Library

reference sources have not turned up anything, yet the lines invoke an “Oh yes, I’m sure I know that,” says Derek. If anyone has a few sleepless hours to fill in, try pottering down a few childhood poetry lanes in search of the poem and its author. And then Derek can get some sleep. Mindless taunt A regular of one of Brisbane’s less salubrious pubs is called Towering Inferno by his drinking mates. He assumes it refers to his macho image. Far from it; they mean he’s burnt out in the top storey. —Jenny Setchell.