Reporter’s diary

Press, 19 December 1989, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Bottles and throttles The Royal New Zealand Air Force maintains checkpoints to vet people entering bases. At Wigram a checkpoint has been installed to ensure that people leaving the base are not . hitting the throttle after • the bottle. The Moody Maze, a driver obstacle course, has been a regular pre-Christmas feature at Ohakea, but is being used at Wigram for the first time this year. The obstacle course involves a line of traffic cones that drivers must negotiate when leaving the base after big functions. If a driver knocks down a cone or drives unusually, the R.N.Z.A.F. police insist on breathtesting. If the driver is over the limit, the car must be parked, the keys

handed in and the person ordered to find alternate means of getting home. The Moody Maze is named after Moody Air Force Base in America, which developed the scheme. It was first used at Wigram last Thursday, with one .driver handing in his car keys. The maze will be in use again this evening. Wigram’s adjutant, Squadron Leader Buck Buchanan, says the majority of Air Force personnel attending social functions at' the base either walk, call taxis or arrange for partners to drive them home, but the maze is a precaution to ensure that no personnel are involved in alcoholrelated traffic accidents. Christmas spirit An elderly local woman who . lives near the High-

way 61 gang in Christchurch offers this Christmas story to back her claim that motor-cycle gang members are “human.” The woman says she has always got on well with the gang; she has made them scones. Last week she needed carpentry on her shed and garage and she rang one of the Highway 61 members, thinking the gang could use pocket money for Christmas. A gang member, who is a carpenter, arrived and did the alterations to her satisfaction. He then refused her offer of payment, saying it was the gang’s Christmas present to her. Red face She was still blushing when she telephoned

“Diary” to confess all. It was a ghastly mistake she said. There she was, strolling along Manchester Street toward a dealer art gallery, she said goodbye to her church friends and nipped through a white doorway and up the stairs. The room up there didn’t look like an art gallery, more like a private bar. A receptionist appeared. “Is this the art gallery?” asked our caller, “No,” came the reply — it was a massage parlour! Our red-faced informant fled down the stairs, hoping that nobody would identify her on leaving the premises. A few yards along the road was another, nearly identical, doorway. Up those stairs was the art gallery. Make sure of your staircase before you climb it, our caller said.