RANDOM SHOTS

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 274, 19 November 1927, Page 22

RANDOM SHOTS

Why all this talk of a bridge across the harbour ? Let the Harbour Board alone, and in time it will make the harbour so narrow that we will be able to hop across.

Madame Frances Alda has denounced Australians and most things in Australia—except one. She says nothing about concert attendances.

When the Lang party vacated the Governmental roost, they left an egg in the nest representing a deficiency of £4,225,000. This upsetß the popular conception of a "nest egg."

"Undue noises caused by the manner in which the motor vehicle is loaded" are prohibited, Under the new motor regulations.' Will the police have power to "unload" the shrieking roysterers one occasionally hears about at 1 a.m.!

A Christchurch traffic inspector on point duty complains that schoolgirls "bombard" him from the trams with pine twigs. It seems that even pointsmen have' their feelings. I suppose the girls will woo him with rose petals now.

The feverish energy that the- Government is displaying in regard to each bill still requiring attention this session is nothing compared with the feverish energy that will be in evidence when the time comes to "foot the bill" next year.

Now that a German who was in a position to know the truth has declared that the Hohenzollerns caused the war, we may hope that another German will tell his countrymen that Germany lost it. But he won't convince the British taxpayer*

"Major Cohen, M.P., the legless member of the House of Commons, was fined £10 for dangerous driving. It was alleged that he had been motoring at 52 miles.an hour." In his case, presumably, the phrase -"stepping on the gas" is only a figurative expression.

Most of the talk about cricketers and others ."cribbing" time under daylight saving is based on a fallacy. The only people who will successfully crib time are those who were "doing time" before daylight saving started and are discharged before it ends.

"I think daylight saving is an lent thing," said an amateur gardener the other day. "The extra hour of daylight .will do the garden ever so much good." Yes, but the younger flowers need their sleep a3 much as ever, and how are they to, be persuaded to sleep in the daylight?

I notice that in the national motor regulations motorists are instructed in how to bend their elbows when about to turn to right or lfeft. Some men, it is well known, are adept at "bending the elbow," but the magistrates of late have been doing their best to discourage i them from driving cars at all. j

The doctors who solemnly held a postmortem examination of the brain of the famous writer, Ana.tole France, remind me of the children who opened their drum to see where the noise came from. As the brain was "12oz below normal," the medical sages stated that "weight bears no relation to intellect." As grandma said, "What wonderful things you hear of nowadays."

A modern Wanganui flapper took no notice of the coming into operation of daylight saving, and arrived at work at the office an hour late. She explained that she had heard some people talking about daylight • saving, but thought it meant that all business places would be closing an hour earlier in the summer months, but she knew nothing of the earlier start. "You see," she said, "I bach with some other girls, and we don't bother to get a newspaper. ( We have quite enough to occupy our time without reading." Just think of the number of "crises" in Ireland, Russia, and South Africa those girls have never heard of!

"We have a land of beauty, and we are being asked to spoil it," said a member of the Auckland Harbour Board about a request to be allowed to advertise on the ferry wharves. Well said! The tourist who steams up the Waitemata on a sunny morning past the lovely foreshore, with its carefully preserved beaches, its jealously guarded pohutu, kawas, its skilful concealment of all that is commercial and ugly (you have observed, of course, how strictly the Railway Department has been controlled in its operations)—the tourist must not be allowed to have his heart-catching impressions of all this spoilt by flaring injunctions on the wharves to take 80-aiid-so's pills and to use so-and-so's tyres. •- » !

WHAT'S IN A NUMBER? A vehement protest was made to the Mount Albert Borough Council this week on behalf of a resident who objected to the number 13 being attatHed to his front gate. He said that it was a matter of sentiment. "What's wrong with No. '13?" queried a councillor.

If you can -walk beneath a painter's ladder And dodge unlucky spots of falling paint, If you can spill the salt and feel no sadder. Although your neighbour promptly "throws a faint"; If new moons shine through windows omens fateful And you regard them with a callous laugh; If dinner knives are crossed by every plateful, And you despise this hoodoo autograph;

If you can smash a mirror -with enjoyment, And drown a cat with far as black as night; If you can give a cross-eyed Chow c employment, And always, heave a horseshoe out of sight; If you can start on "Friday o'er the ocean. And -never wear your shirt with buttons hid; . If mascots are " a medieval notion, And swastikas are playthings for the "kid"; If opals are not jewels inauspicious, Nor rabbits' feet a harbinger of luck; If horrid dreams don't make you superstitious. Nor premonitions undermine your pluck; If you can be the thirteenth man at dinner. And light your cigarette the last of three; If you can bras' "you always are a winner," And never touch the nearest wood you see;

If you can do all this —and be a scorer In Life's unending battle with the Fates: Then you can say "All rightly!" "Kia Ora!"; "Put Number 13 on my garden gates." But when . these figures indicate your dwelling, And pr&ve that you are not among "the flats," 111 guarantee you'll hear your neighbour? yelling: " He m t « V S, at about a l uid or two in Tatt s!"