Reporter s Diary

Press, 11 April 1979, Page 2

Reporter s Diary

Music-lover A WOLF that had been worrying sheep at a Russian State farm near Minsky is now behind bars in Leningrad Zoo—thanks to its fondness for old tango music. Shepherds at the farm had tried for a

long time to drive the wolf away with recordings of dogs barking, but eventually they gave up and started playing old tango records for their own amusement. Suddenly the wolf was heard howling to the music, and it became so enraptured that it. was easily captured. The animal was sent to the zoo with a note attached: “Likes old tangos.”Essay prize WENDY HODDER, of Otorohanga College, has won first prize in an essay competition for secondary school pupils about “How advertising affects my life.” The contest promoter, the Association of New Zealand Advertisers, is so pleased with her entry’ lhat it has made a poster out of it. Her essay, needless to say, brings out some of the more positive aspects of advertising. She begins her piece with this little ditty by Ogden Nash: “I think that I shall never see, A billboard lovely as a tree, Indeed unless the billboards fall, I’ll never see a tree at all.” Stranded ONE DAY last week, the North Island was in the invidious position of being completely cut off from the Mainland,' thanks to industrial stoppages by aircraft and marine engineers. This week, while the planes are still grounded (thanks to another industrial stoppage) but the ferries are moving again, it appears that inter-island links are no better off. A paragraph in a short report in yesterday’s edition of “The Press”'did hot go unnoticed by several readers. “If the general manager of the Railways can't get

down here by rail ferry and train, who can?” they wanted to know. “And it doesn’t say much for the future of railways,” they said. The paragraph that excited their interest read: “The general manager of New Zealand Railways (Mr T. M. Haywood) was to have addressed a meeting in Christchurch on ‘The future of railways in New Zealand.’ but he was stranded in Wellington by the air strike and could not travel to Christchurch any other way.” Ray of hope A FAINT glimmer of hope has been given by the Government to cyclists who have had difficulty in obtaining dynamo lighting sets for their bicycles. Last year, the Christchurch Road Safety Committee, along with the Bicycle Planning Committee and representatives from the cycle trade in Christchurch, approached the Government to complain that generator lighting sets, or dynamos, were almost impossible to get. This did nothing to encourage cyclists to “light up” at night and was potentially a safety hazard, they said. At” last, the Government has acknowledged this. In the latest import licensing schedule, cycle lighting is listed as exempted from import restrictions. So dynamos should soon be back in the shops. Well feathered FORETHOUGHT by one of the more active members of the Canterbury Children’s Theatre has solve a problem for the theatre group’s wardrobe and properties departments for the coming production of “Daniel Boone.” Last year, when she found that the group planned to do “Daniel Boone” during the 1979 May holidays, she asked the’ proprietor of a Christchurch zoo and aviary if he would mind keeping all the feathers dropped by his birds during the moult. He agreed, and last week the woman received a telephone call to say that the feathers were ready to be picked up. She found he had collected a sack full of them — enough to make the “Daniel Boone” Shawnee warriors the best-feathered Indians this side of Kentucky.

Self raising A NELSON woman decided io make a large batch of hot cross buns for herself. her two daughters and their families for Easter, a reader told us yesterday. But after she had made the double quantity of dough, she suddenly realised that it was the day when power would be off in her district. So she telephoned one of her daughters, who lived on the other side of Nelson to see if the power was on there and to ask if she could cook the buns in her oven, as it were. Her daughter agreed, and ■so the woman put the dough in a basket, covered it with a cloth, and set off to catch a bus. However, it was a hot day, and the dough started to rise. By the time she got to the centre of Nelson to catch another bus, it was becoming embarrassing. So she bought a newspaper and headed for the women’s toilets. There, she wrapped up about one-third of the dough and hid it on top of the water cistern. She put the rest of the dough back in her basket, but while she was doing this, she noticed the newspaper start to move with the dough inside and a strange sound started coming out. She hurried our, and caught a bus to her daughter’s. While she was on the bus, she started to wonder what on earth people would think if they had gone into the toilet and seen the parcel of dough moving about on top of the cistern. She started to laugh, and the more she thought about it, the more she laughed — much to the consternation of the bus driver and fellow passengers. Official graffiti THE OTAGO Trailer Yacht Squadron keeps logs of its members’ activities, as all good sailors do. But one of its logs is quite extraordinary. It is a “100 log” — an official record of the life of a 100. Last summer, the yacht club’s committee bought a toilet tent to take on the many club cruises throughout the season. In order to keep a log of where the club (and the tent) had been, they decided to record events on the side of the toilet tent. —Felicity Price