ONGE ABOARD THE LUGGER--

Auckland Star, Volume LI, Issue 27, 31 January 1920, Page 17

ONGE ABOARD THE LUGGER--

SOME NOTES ON HOLIDAY- ; MAKING. ; (By CTRAXO.] When I last had the plea-sure and the privilege of writing here 1 advised everybody to seek "the pine woods and the larger air," or their New Zealand equivalent, at Christmas time, so, of course, I did so myself. The programme was a camping party by the sea, in a lotos-land , of pohutukawas that leaned over the j water, a beach between, and behind these ! a wooded hill that sloped steeply to the brilliant blue of the sky. That was the goal, but first of all there was the pre- j paration. There may he some people who i can make up their minds on Thursday ; or Friday to go camping on Saturday, and do it quite successfully, but I am not one of them. All my life 1 have envied the man who can travel without j j an introductory period of worry. I have j envied those heroes of Dumas and Stan- | ley Weyman who apparently at a mo- , menfs notice could mount a horse and ! ride from one end of France to the other • without thinking anything about pre- . parations. Their luggage was appar- | ently wrapped in a handkerchief, and what they did for changes of undercloth- ! ing—but those were "the good old days." j Then there was Sherlock Holmes, who j used to run down to the country after a i case just as we run into town. "Just ! look up Bradshaw, Watson." he would '■ say. "I think we've just time to get a j train." They had—just time, and they staved down "there several days. I would . have worried about what clothes I would j carry and what I should take tn read. \ There must be many people to whom a ! journey to Wellington is a commonplace thine:" to mc it is still an event. So with" us this camp was an event —a thing to be prepared for weeks beforehand. I reckon that the preparatory period was about as long as the holiday itself. Fares and freights, beds and groceries, tents, tools, boots, hats, books and cameras—all these weighty matters had i to be settled. Every day had its job. Should we take the old wire stretcher? Could I manage with one old coat? How much food should we pack up to tide over the period before the first local supplies were available? These ami other questions consumed an astonishing amount of ; time; they cropped up between discussions about the Russian situation, the 1 prospects for the elections, and the outlook for our precious pumpkins. I suppose there was a prodigious waste of time in it all, but how pleasant it was! And

how nice it was to lind things falling ink) p your mouth. We wanted a tent. A d visit to a tent shop disclosed that there n was but one left, and that big enough for C Haig's headquarters. I had made up my c mind to leave it to Providence, on the a principle that "it would be all right on 1 the night"—that is. that a. tent would I turn up somewhere on or near the spot— when I met a friend and casually mentioned my difficulty. ''Oh,'' he said. ' •As got a tent. Just wait a minute. -, He went off to an adjoining office, anil I. came back with A, whom I knew hut j slightly. A had a tent not in use—l I ] gathered that A had most things—and j ' would be delighted to lend it. ' Then there were books. You always ' ' start out for a camp—that is. if you are I ' a book-lover—with a library carefully ' '. selected, and a determination to do an • immense amount of reading. You will sit under the trees and read all the things you've been wanting to read for years, ami in the evening the party will ,' all sit round and read aloud and discuss hooks. Of course, you don't do these things. You find that cooking, washing up. cutting wood, and other "chores," and the round of excursions which the demons of energy in the party force on yourself. In the evening there is tired- j ness—and mosquitoes. As Bishop Blou- | gram says, "You come on shipboard with ] a landsman's list of tilings he calls con-! venienf'—and in the end you may glance ] for a few minutes at some stale newspapers. So the day comes. There is a rush of things to do—from writing a re-direc-tion form to the post office to getting i boot laces. You may find, as I did, that j | your telephone takes it into its per-; verse head to go wrong on that particu-! i lar day. and you can get nothing from j I the other end but a faint "Are you I there?" uttered with maddening iteraj tion. The final order to the grocer. I given in the afternoon over a neighi hour's telephone, is for a medley of I things that appeals to a sense "of humour j which the rush of the day has not quite ; killed—two pounds of biscuits, a tin of sardines, a packet of tacks, a pound of cheese, half a pound of sulphur, and a bottle of castor oil. Seven-thirty in the evening, and you are ready to start, but the grocer has not arrived. You are loaded \ip with as much gear as an inj a book in each pocket of your jacket, la bathing costume (discovered at the • last moment) in one overcoat pocket. i and a camera in the other. Then the igroc-er turns up. and with discreet j gravity decants his order at your feet I just outside your gate. You don"t know where the stuff is going, for everybody and everything is full to overflowing. i Eventually you yourself march off to the ■ tram with the bottle of castor oil in one J overcoat breast pocket, the top of the ] bottle, quite like something much more

pleasant, peeping out with a look of coy dissipation—the sulphur in its opposite, a volume of sonnets somewhere else, ConratTs latest novel making a big bulge on your left side, a billy in one hand, and a senile portmanteau in the other. You wish that the authors of the "Irish R.M." could see you. Having piloted your section of the party safely to the oteamer, you look out "for the Allied forces. About threequarters of an hour before the boat sails the main body turns up, and reports that the general lias forgotten the tickets, and has gone home for them; it. is poseible he may mirs his trip. Of course you are duly sympathetic, but you congratulate yourself on never having done anything of the kind. Indeed it is a. forgetting which surprises mc. It is likeleaving the wedding ring behind on your; wedding morn, or going into hat without a bat in your hand. In this ease the culprit had suddenly -discovered his deficiency halt-way into town, jumped off, the car. caught a passing car in the! opposite direction, and managed to runt home and get the tickets in the few minutes that the car waited at the terminus. Honour was saved, and a relieved camping party was able to go to! bed. or to enjoy watching the ingenuity with which passengers were •packed into the ship. I don't know whether they put them in the engineroom, but l"do know that when in my' innocence I strolled along next morning for a bath, there was a- bed in every bath-room. Next morning we ranged all our helongings out on the wharf at , ready for the launch. There were twenty-five packages, and, with the lessons of the war still in my mind. T checked them with a. written list. Otherwise there might have been porridge without spoons, or beds without bedding. Then the launch came to ferry u» across a lazy blue o>beequious sea, and by breakfast time we had landed in our bay, where an advance gcard already had a fire lit, and the adventure ha-d passed the prologue and reached the first act.