Reporter’s diary

Press, 28 January 1986, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Toppled tower

THE POLITICAL cartoonist for a Swiss newspaper took an unusual angle on the continuing nuclearfree Pacific dispute between New Zealand and France in an edition of his paper late last year. The cartoon shows the Eiffel Tower in Paris at an unusual angle, with a French citizen telling a gendarme that “New Zealand has performed a harmless underground atomic test in Normandy.” Canterbury days MAXINE TOZER, a young Wanganui woman, has won a 10-day holiday in Canterbury that will start on Saturday with a Christchurch Airport welcome by the Wizard and a horse and carriage ride into the city. Maxine will be coming down with her mother as the winner of the Promotion Council travel show promotion held In Wellington last year. She last visited Christchurch as a teen-ager 15 years ago. This time, she will be spending part of her time on the water — jet-boat-ing on the Waimakariri River and rafting through the Rakaia River gorge. She will stay in Ashburton, Akaroa, Hanmer Springs and at Pudding Hill as part of a set schedule before having five days free to roam around Christchurch. Her airport welcome, according to the Promotion Council, will emphasise that Christchurch is different, with both character and characters. Being seen AN AMERICAN who has been driving in New Zealand for more than a year is constantly having other drivers blink their headlights at him during the day. Road safety studies in the United States have shown that oncoming drivers have a better chance of seeing you if your headlights are on, especially if weather conditions are gloomy. On long straight stretches, oncoming drivers are discouraged from passing if they see lights ahead when a car without lights

would be less visible. As the man was coming back from Hanmer Springs to Christchurch the other day, he was waved to the side of the road by a traffic officer who wanted to point out that his lights were on. When he explained why he had them on, the officer said it sounded like a pretty good idea, come to think of it In the States, many drivers did the same thing as a matter of course, regardless of the driving conditions. But here, many oncoming drivers flicked their lights on in a helpful way, thinking he must be making a mistake. He would like to thank everyone for showing so much conem about his headlights, but he knows what he is doing and intends to keep doing it He drives a green Holden, if that is any help to those who feel obliged to blink at him. An Automobile Association officer was not aware of any New Zealand studies on the advantages of having headlights on, but he said lights should be used if there were any visibility problems. He drives a yellow car. If he is driving some place such as the Haast Pass, there is no need to have lights under normal circumstances because his car stands out so much against the landscape. In the Mackenzie Country, though, the yellow colour can get lost in the landscape. Suitable tenant A MAN who has two rooms available for renting in a Christchurch house has advertised for a flatmate in an unorthodox way. He starts off the advertisement with “The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” the title of a book by Karl Marx. “Concur?” asks the ad, and goes on to say that accommodation is available close to the city for an enlightened single person or couple. By. yesterday morning, he had received one reply and was hoping for more. He has read books* by Marx and and would like to share the house with

someone who shares some of his ideological interests.

Reading room

KARL MARX researched "Das Kapital" at a desk there, and he might look unkindly at its proposed fate, in addition to a free market approach to its work. The place is the British Library’s domed reading rooms, built in 1857 and part of the pre-viously-named British Museum Library. New premises for the leaking library, where the book collection is in danger of rotting, are being built a kilometre away in London. A group of prominent British intellectuals has tried to block the move, being made partly because water seeps behind the book stacks after heavy rain. The new building will have under one roof books from about 20 others buildings in the city. Sir Frederick Dainton, the library chairman, says that the reading room ' dispute aside, an aggressive marketing strategy must be adopted. A marketing manager has been appointed, and revenue will be raised by commercial exploitation of the collection, which includes every book printed in Britain. Each year, 16km of new shelving must be added. Sir Frederick says the library wants publishers to come and reproduce its treasures. It wants the business world to use its information resources. Over boundary ' A TIMARU police social cricket team was warming up last week for a game in the local interfirm competition when Constable Helen Ruston, accidentally hit a ball over a fence. A teammate ran off in pursuit and noticed a small plot of cannabis growing in the back garden across the fence. Officers on duty; were quickly notified, and; residents of the property,, a man and woman, wer«f arrested and charged with cultivating cannabis. -J.Z

—Stan Darling