HOBBY MAD.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 90, 17 April 1925, Page 7

HOBBY MAD.

1 • MAN OF ONE IDEA. THE BORE WE ALL KNOW. , THE RACING CALENDAR MIND. Who docs not know the enthusiastic I man who is "gone" on one particular '[ subject, on which he dwells and dreams ' and talks and bores all bis friends every day? He is the man with one i idea. He has magnified it so much in | his own mind that it supersedes all else, | and every fact and circumstance of life iis regarded in relation to it. Take the ! race fiend, for instance. No religious I maniac was ever such a bore as be. I His mind is a racing calendar, a store- | house of turf records, and the mirror of i totalisator dividends for tlie past ! twelve months or more. One meets him iin the street, and, no matter how the; 1 conversation begins, before a minute or j I two he has you deep in the engrossing subject of the probable winners at j Saturday's trots, or is lamenting the fact that all the winners last week paid diminutive dividends. His pockets bulge with race book-, and in his hand is the racing page of some sporting journal. It is this type of enthusiast that makes the life of a newspaper reporter hard by his repeated requests on the telephone for "the winner of the big race." If you can't discuss racing with him on terms of similar knowledge he regards you as something akin to an idiot. Football Fever. Next day the football maniac is encountered. He is as bad as the horsey person, but he is more prone to argue. Nothing suits him better than to stand in the street for hours, or sit in the club, talking the inevitable football. It is ever fresh. In the early part of the week he will discuss last Saturday's results, and then, as the week wears on, his mind is fixed on the coming Saturday, and he has an elaborate system worked out in his feverish mind, with the teams that are to win written in red letters, as it were. Should anything happen to upset his calculations he takes it as a personal affront, and as something akin to bad management on the part of the referee. Over-keen followers of boxing are usually oneeyed people, with a favourite firmly fixed in their mind, and when the fight '■ comes on they see only one man. Nine times out of ten they have a small bet on the fight, and if there is anything that makes for narrow-mindedness it is betting on a boxing contest. The opponent, no matter how clever he may be, can do nothing right, and if he should get the nod then the referee is an old fool or a young ignoramus. The King of Bores. But of all bores the radio enthusiast is the worst. The world to him is a universe of radio-transmitters. His talk is an incomprehensible jargon of abbreviated signals. He rushes madly home from business, bolts his dinner, pulls on a sweater, lights his pipe, and, after tinkering around for a little, settles down for the night and half the morning to hear the world—--his -world— start talking. "Hurrah!" he yells, "I can hear Paris!'' He grabs you, and pulls you into his smoke-heavy den, where he claps a set of naval receivers over your head and bids you listen. You know nothing of radio, much less do you understand Morse signals. That is nothing to the fiend. Lust of battle j gleams in his eye. "Tick —tick—tack— I oow — howl — screech — crash —tick— tick," goes something in your ear. "T'/it's Paris you are listening to," he enthuses, and prattles on telling you just bow he managed to get in on this wonderful bit of radio conversation. "What are they talking about?" you query. "Dunno, can't speak French," he replies, "but I sat listening the other night for over an hour." Suspecting that your friend's mind has been weakened by too much radio, you suggest a night at the pictures, or a walk, only to bo regarded with the ferocious glare of the man who imagines he has been insulted. "Pictures! Walk! Huh! You must think I've got time to waste!" he replies, and delves again into the realm of mystic howls and yells that is Paris talking to Capetown. I Book Worms and Camera Fiends. I The book lover is of all enthusiasts less inclined to ram his hobby down the threats of others than any other fiend, i but he can be a bore, too, and is rather | inclined to weigh all his acquaintances by the number and quality of the books they have read. That there are many clever people who are not book-crazy never seems to dawn on him. The camera fiend is going out of date. He is quite a tame variety of the hobby maniac these days, mainly owing to the fact that he takes most of his work Ito the quick service depots, and the i hobby, apart from the actual moment jof taking the snap, is thus shorn of much of its interest. Still, one dare not disturb him as he sits at home I with album and paste, busy making up ! tlie record of last year's activities. Then there is that mild-mannered person, the ■ stamp collector. He keeps his mouth shut in the world, and really isn't a bore at all till he meets another philatelist, and then—well, there is nobody else present. Of the golf bore it were better that nothing be said. The truth is that no man is so entirely versatile that he can evince an intelligent interest in every subject that may be mentioned in the course of polite conversation —nt least, his interest may be intelligent, but his knowledge of the subject may appear to j the keen enthusiast to be so infinitesij mal that it can be regarded as nothing ' short of sheer ignorance. The wonder lis how these one-idea people continue to | earn a living. The moment they stop work for the day their minds revert jto their pet hobby, whether it be ; jazzing, racing, mah-jong, or radio, and ; they are not happy till they are at it. Work with such as these is an unpleasant necessity, but it probably saves Shem from Bedlam.