Reporter's Diary

Press, 21 April 1979, Page 2

Reporter's Diary

Price on his head

CUSTOMERS at a Christchurch garage sale recently were intrigued with one of the items being offered for sale, not surprisingly. It was a pedigree, long-haired miniature dachshund that had been imported at a cost of $3OO by the sister of one of the young women holding the sale — and he was sitting in a box on the table, surrounded by items of clothing and old household bits and pieces. On his head was a price tag — “Cheap. Not housetrained. $3,” it said. Of all the things on the sale table, he attracted the most interest. But, fortunately for his owner, the numerous offers were not accepted. When she found out about her sister’s little practical joke, we hear, she was far from amused. Pictorial proof APROPOS yesterday’s item about the old electric cars that once used to be seen on Christchurch’s streets, there is an impressive photograph of some of these vehicles on the wall of the lounge bar of the Carlton Hotel. It depicts a rally held outside the hotel about 1912. Dixon’s electric meat waggon, mentioned in the “Diary” item, is there, with many others of similar ilk. Photographs of the city’s old electric cars appear to be plentiful. Several readers telephoned yesterday to say -they had

one, including a descendant of Mr Dixon, the butcher who owned the electric meat waggon. Three in a row GARAGE SALES have certainly become integral to the New Zealand way of life. One family found that, by coincidence, the day they had decided to hold a garage sale, their neighbours on either side had hit upon the same idea. With three garage sales in a row, their part of the street looked a little like a fairground, with people turning up to one of them, wandering next door, and then next door again to seek a bargain. Zillmer defined FURTHER to Wednesday’s item quoting the E.E.C. gobbledegook on Zillmerizing, the British company executive has now discovered what the word means. Zillmer was the name of the man who invented a technique used by insurance people and actuaries. It means “the allowance made for the lower costs associated with renewal premiums compared with the expense of procuring insurance business in the first place.” You learn something every day. Air mail tourist A CHRISTCHURCH woman, leaving’ during Easter for a three-month tour of Australia, was

lucky to have ever got off the ground. The first thing she did when she arrived at the airport was to post letters. But the minute she dropped them in the let-ter-box, she realised to her horror that she had posted her travel tickets, too. In a frenzy, she went from one airport employee to another, trying to find someone who could open the mailbox for her to get her tickets back. But everyone told her that only a Post Office employee could open the box — and the nearest such person was several miles away in town. With the DCIO starting up its engines on the tarmac, it looked as though she wasn’t going to make it. But a kindly Air New Zealand employee wrote her out another one, in the nick of time, and so she caught her flight after all. Just as she was entering the departure lounge, she saw a postman empty the letter-box with her return tickets inside. Silly season IT’S THAT time of year again, when statues of Queen Victoria suddenly become adorned overnight with corsets and pantaloons, when Mayors are captured and held to ransom, and when city fountains receive their annual dose of detergent and dye. It’s Capping Week, and to show that they can be as clever and inventive as the average two-year-old, students are starting to get up te their old pranks — such as the load of manure that some bright spark put on the bridge linking the university

campus with the Students’ Union building; and the footprints from the Godley statue in Cathedral Square to the men’s underground lavatory and back. Plenty of practice DAWIE de Villiers had an uphill battle as Springbok half-back and captain in Australia and New Zealand in 1965 (the Springboks had one win in six tests) but he has taken on an even harder task as South African Ambassador to Britain. His many hours spent manipulating the ball on the rugby field should serve him well when he has to field all the criticism of Britain’s anti-apartheid activists on the subject of sports contacts with South Africa. Mr de Villiers emphasises that he is not a trained diplomat but wants to “do his best to repair the damaged sporting bridges between Britain and South Africa.” His definition of a diplomat is “a man who can talk about bread to a baker, meat to a butcher, and about sandwiches to both of them.” Footnote

THE FOOD processing industry’s endless search for new treats is leading to all manner of gastronomic oddities. Vegetable, mineral, and with animal connotations (as well as possible Freudian ones) make up the “grosser fuss” — the brainwave of a West German manufacturer. It is a lime-flavoured icecream on a stick moulded in the shape of a human foot, complete with toes. —Felicity Price