AROUND THE TEA TABLE

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 234, 4 October 1927, Page 12

AROUND THE TEA TABLE

MATTERS OF GENERAL INTEREST,

(By SHIRLEY.)

Our shopkeepers get into trouble sometimes through the early closing law. In England they might be more disconcerted, for there a magisterial decision has ruled that ice cream is not a "refreshment," and therefore may not be partaken of at undue hours. However, in Sydney at least, it looks as if shoping may be much curtailed, for the chain letter has been used lately to promote direct buying. It is thus described. You put a shilling out in a coupon, send also a postal note for three shillings to the obliging firm, receive four coupons, and sell these to four morons—l beg pardon, friends—at one shilling each. When each of the four friends has artlessly posted to the firm a postal note for three shillings, then you, who began the business, receive from that firm a pair of stockings allegedly worth 18/. The four friends meanwhile are forming another link of the chain, and so on da capo. The system has so spread that cigarettes, golf balls and other articles have been added as possible purchases, while, jf a Sydney husband receives an unexpected gift of socks, it may be because his wife has become one of a quartet.

What always strikes me in those chain stories is the fact that so many women seem to have friends willing to enchain themselves in this manner. lam quite sure, if such an epistle comes my wav, I won't be able to think of even four beings so amiable as to send three shillings somewhere in order that I may get 18/ worth. lam quite sure, if I tried it on, three of the four would want to know what I meant, and the fourth would look at me with that chill look when I passed. As a way to get rid of boring acquaintances, the chain letter, I should fancy, would be excellent. Evidently, however, others have more tried and faithful partisans than myself, as is proved by the fact that the latest coupon of this Sydney enterprise was marked 06,000, though kindly men have risen to explain that it is mathematically impossible that every woman can come out of the enterprise with silk stockings I or golf halls to the good.

1 often wonder how our more socialistic friends can still dream of community kitchens and shared dining rooms when every modern tendency is going more and more the other way. In a lodging house would you not think that the roomers, women on their own, would club together, one doing for the others in turn, with bettor and cheaper meals as a resultant? You would think so, but you would have to think again. My mind just now, for instance, is on certain people who, having talked Christmas for the last month, are now bargaining in good time for rooms in a certain type of accommodation house in one of our chief holiday resorts. Why? because 15/ for a room includes the right to go down to a vast kitchen, and there peg out a selection on one or other of the gas cookers, which section thereupon becomes strictly private property. Her own cups and 6aucers and saucepan also help to keep the peace when one after another of the holiday makers treks down to cook and wash up for herself. Very popular is this class of lodging house, each roomer giving up cheerfully all chance of a joint or other of the dishes that can't be made for one. Freedom is more than food, liberty than luxurious living. True, the primitive Christians had everything in common but then, after all, they had so little to have in common. lam quite certain that they didn't possess frying pans, for they couldn't possibly use these socialistically. More homes are bfoken up by these adinary articles, and more domestic frientships ruiued by them, than by everything else combined. The reason is that there are about half a dozen ways of cleansing those handy "vehicles," and every single one of them is wrong, to someone or other of our sex.

Having swum the channel, walked round the world, come out well in aviation, woman in the person of Miss Sheila Macdonald has now distinguished herself by climbing the African mountain Kilimanjaro, being first of her sex to do so. Even the men who accompanied her rather gave Sheila best. What interests mc in those stories is the wonder how women got on two hundred years ago when such expenditure of energy was considered unladylike. For the urge to climb mountains and swim channels must have been there. No wonder they had to have scold's bridles and duckling stools in that age—force must come out in vigorous speech if denied vigorous muscular action.

In these days of domestic novels, some writers glorify the heroine washing up at the sink, but such authors are men, I notice. What girl can fail to attend to this duty in a more agreeable frame of mind after Arnold Bennetts' dainty description of Rachel "standing over an enamel basin, from which the steam rose gently. .. . She completely immersed spoons and forks in the warm water, and then rubbed them with a brush like a large nail brush. Her wiping was an art. She seemed to recognise each fork as a separate individuality, and to attend to it as to a little animal. She made of washing up an art as fine as fine needlework, so exact, so dainty, so proud were the motions of her fingers and forearms." Bennett even notices that knife handles must not be loosened, and that sticking the blades in a jug of high water is dangerous, as the rising steam is as bad as the hot water. And what reader would believe that he is one of the authors for whom all household work must be stilled before he can write his excellent descriptions of household work?