Disarray at town’s library
The quiet little town of Palmerston has little to offer the visitor in the way of recreation, and it cannot be said that reading room in the library reflects credit on those responsible for its upkeep. The papers, magazines and illustrated weeklies are anything but neatly arranged on the one table in the building, and, apart from this, none, or very few, of the illustrated papers contains the illustrations. They have either been torn out, or are scattered all over the place. Few have covers, and, in short, Palmerston seems to have gone to sleep as far as the reading room is concerned.
St Kilda fence smashed
A serious accident was narrowly averted yesterday afternoon when a motor car travelling from Anderson’s Bay road along the Queen’s Drive, which was driven by Mr B. Wallace, and a car, driven by Mr P. Ireland, which was turning out of Grey street nearly came into collision. In endeavouring to avoid a smash Mr Wallace swung his car across from the right side of the street, and it mounted the footpath, just missed a telegraph pole, and crashed into a picket fence on the property of Mr Fox. The car smashed a portion of the fence and a hedge before it was pulled up. Fortunately no one was seriously hurt, but Mrs Wallace sustained some bruises. Mr Ireland’s car escaped damage.
Council reporter has bad day
Papers, books, pens, pencils, ink, tins, boxes and dust adorn, in disorderly array, the press table in a certain County Council board room a short distance from Dunedin. It gives the appearance of having come out of the Old Curiosity Shop, but even Dickens’s famous creation presented some element of method, and that is where the table in question differs. The table is placed below two large windows, an ideal position as far as the light is concerned, but a glance at the window pane and the shelf below the glass is apt to restrain a desire for a second look. In the left hand corner of the window is a spider web, old and worn with constant use and weighed down with flies, bees, moths and other winged insects. Then on the window ledge below there is a mass of insects, half buried in dust, while a book or two seem to to have become fixtures. Anyone interested in such a gruesome thing can sit at the press table and watch the wily spider have his fill, and the number of flies it catches in a day speaks well for the security of its position and strength of its web. Possibly, the spider has for so long hold its position on the window pane that no one has had the heart to disturb it. — ODT, 17.11.1924
Compiled by Peter Dowden
