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Reporter’s diary

Puya plant

JANUARY, the silly season for newspapers in this part of the world, is sometimes known as Unusual Plant Month. Things that have been lurking in the garden suddenly shoot up in stalks and flowers never suspected by the average gardener. Dorothy Cockram, a St Andrews Hill resident, first noticed her plant shooting up earlier this month. She had noticed the base of the plant before, and had cut it back from time to time, but the spiky stalk suddenly rose until it looked something like a rocket to the moon. It is now more than a metre high, and sprouting purple flowers. The plant is a Puya, a native of South America. A specimen that flowers every year can be seen in the Botanic Gardens. It is in a border at the conservatories, next to Townend House. A gardens worker said the sudden appearance on the hill may have resulted from Mrs Cockram’s plant reaching maturity. Bouncing past DRIVING back from a day trijMo Le Bons Bay

recently, a young Christchurch woman noticed a peculiar noise as she drove down Riccarton Road. She stopped, but could see nothing amiss. As she drove on, a louder noise and a crunch brought her to a quick halt. She saw one of her rear tyres bound past her, narrowly miss two parked cars and crash into a fence. She had recently had all four tyres refitted. She was lucky to get back to the city with it, and luckier still to have someone nearby who could help. A man in the tyre business was across the street with a friend, looking at cars in a dealer’s yard. He helped to put the tyre back on well enough for her to get home. Fright time A CHRISTCHURCH city centre fruit and vegetable shop was burgled last year, then set alight by the intruders. The shop was rebuilt Already this year, there have been three burglaries in just over a week. The shop owner drove down on Sunday night to make sure that nothing wasianiiss. When he he

found police cars in the street near his shop. They were investigating a light left on in a building just down the street, an investigation that came to nothing. As the man stood outside his shop, he heard sounds coming from the television he keeps out back. Right, he thought, this time I’ve got the cheeky rats. He told the police how many times he had been burgled, and that someone was inside. They told him to wait until they got dogs before going in. They waited until the dogs and handlers were ready, then went in through the roller door, dogs barking, much to the frightened surprise of the television watchers, who were from a restaurant next door. The watchers, who had let themselves in with a key kept by the restaurant so it can stock up on supplies when it runs short at night, were right in the middle of one of the scariest parts of “The Howling,” a werewolf movie. To them, it appeard that the wolves were really arriving. All was explained. The shop owner was not aware that restaurant workers sometimes slipped over for the Sunday Horrors.

The solution

A CITY woman who puts up with her husband watching the scare movies on Sunday night television but does not want to hear about them the next day was willing to be told that silver bullets were the way to get rid of werewolves, a method shown in “The Howling.” Nonsense, said the longsuffering woman, who had just returned from a week in the country, taking care of a friend’s farm. What you need is a tennis racket wielded with the right amount of fervour. The farm dogs had been less than co-operative in obeying their temporary owners. One, which had a reputation for snapping at people, had refused to get back in his kennel. He was allowed to stay out overnight, but when he wandered up to the house the next day, that was the last straw. The woman did not want him anywhere near her two-year-old boy. She picked up his toy racket and leaped over a fence and two gates, shouting “Naughty boy” and similar appropriate threats as the dog hightailed it out towards the implement shed. He did one circuit of the shed, with her in hot pursuit, and leaped into his kennel. The woman thinks the same method should work for werewolves if there are such things, which she doubts. Bad timing JUST before the special midday news report about the Challenger space shuttle tragedy at Cape Canaveral, television ran a cartoon about the crash of a space capsule with a tortoise aboard. Can’t face it

DENTAL phobia clinics, described in a story from New York City yesterday, might come in handy here. A city worker who was on the verge of a dental appointment yesterday turned in desperation to a secretary and asked her to ring the dentist. “Tell him I’ve gone crook,” he said, “and might be laid up for quite some time.” He would make another appointment when he came right. Getting past A HAWKE’S Bay woman who has lived in England for six years went to a London concert by the Drongos last year. She and her friends were trying to smuggle somealcohol into the concert, and thought that the only obstacle was a rather rotund bouncer standing by the door. The man, who they did not recognise at first, was David Lange, who had come along to hear his favourite New Zealaaji band. * —Stan Darling, j

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/CHP19860130.2.14

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Press, 30 January 1986, Page 2

Word count
Tapeke kupu
937

Reporter’s diary Press, 30 January 1986, Page 2

Reporter’s diary Press, 30 January 1986, Page 2

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