HAPPY HAMPSTEAD HEATH.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 225, 23 September 1929, Page 6

HAPPY HAMPSTEAD HEATH.

While you in New Zealand were shivering over a mid-winter fire we here in London welcomed the sun's hot rays, for it meant joyous picnics to London's East-enders, especially to costers. Over 100,000 gathered at their favourite Hampstead Heath on one of the few red-letter 'days of the year, the August Bank Holiday. 'From the earliest hours of the morning underground trains and buses were packed to suffocation with large ami happy families, yea, even to cats and dogs. I do wonder whether the suitcases, tied optimistically with thin string, held together their precious contents. An unending stream it was that slowly walked to the Heath, once the haunt of Dick Turpin, whose pistols still on view fire the vivid imagination of youth. More peaceful memories abound, too, for it was on one of the numerous ponds of the Heath that Shelley, anticipating the miniature fleets of to-day, I sailed tiny vessels for his little friends; Keats, ■ Constable, Romney and Coventry Patmore lived jon its borders; Dickens, of course, loved this i typical London haunt, with its Jack Straw's Castle and its other famous tavern no less than "The Spaniards," where Mrs. Bardell of "Pickwick Papers" was enjoying herself when arrested.

After all, we need not have bothered to fortify ourselves with lunch before entering the gay precincts, for never in my travels have I seen gathered together such an infinite variety of food.

all clearly priced, too, so that you know just where you were. Cheek by jowl they nestled; green peas and mint sauce, tuppence a help; crisp rolls cut in halves to hold a slice of cheese or salmon and cucumber; apple fritters, three for tuppence, all piping hot, as were the fried fish and potatoes or doughnuts; hard-boiled eggs; cakes that suggested the stray ings of saffron; oysters at tuppence each were beyond the reach of all but the wealthy. Not so, however, with the thronged stalls that showed appetising little saucers of whelks, cockles and mussels —"'Ere y'are, ma, three nice fat ones! Pass 'er the vinegar there, she likes a nip to 'er's, she do!" With the words the perspiring chef took between fingers and thumb plump snail-lifte objects and plunked them in front of waiting customers, who then plentifully sprinkled the dish from holey corks. After all, Queen Elizabeth did not bother about spoons and forks. Did I leave out saveloys and sweets?

Of amusements, skilled and gambled, tliere was no end, many of the best ones being impromptu, such as the can-can danced by halt a dozen young factory girls, their voices supplying sufficient music. Talking of music, it really was refreshing to be in a crowd that did not boast one single gramophone —no, not one in all the eight hundred and twenty acres! Delighted children hugged the coconuts that father knocked over at the shies, and I could not see that trade was any brisker at the one- with the vermilion legend "Fresh coconuts daily from our own plantation'-' — judging by the owner the "plantation" was anything but flourishing. Small inverted flower pots tied to string and "asking to be broken dangle.l aimlessly, partly, no doubt, because the prizes were not sufficiently visible. Skipping, one penny a turn, gave the three owners of the rope scop for true Cockney wit, such as "Good as mother's milk," as he passed over the beer bottle to his partner with the remark to "keep his nose out of it." Two boys attracted plentiful pennies 'Inbreaking six-inch nails and iron chains and challenging strong men to strangle them with a ship's rope.

The tit-bit of the day was, however, reserved for the end, when, to my great joy, I saw a real "pearly." "Excuse me, please, I come from New Zealand, and may I take your photo?" I # asked in my most winning tones, and with what I hoped was a tremulous smile calculated to melt t-Tie heart of any man, for, indeed, you never know quite where you are with your London coster.

"Sartinly, lidy, and where would you like to tike it?" With'which words he slowly elevated himself from his lowly position by the boat swings, slowly because of the truly awful weight of those hundreds and hundreds of pearl buttons, on cap, trousers, waistcoat and jacket, ill pinks and whites, designed in horse shoes and arabesques, and every one, mind you, sewn on by hand.

So, followed by a steadily-growing and admiring crowd, the Pearly King of Southwark and 1 posed under the beautiful old elms and oaks. And then, woman-like, I questioned him as to his garments and the silver discs that hung therefrom. "Those? That's wot me and my mates has collected for charity, thousands and thousands of pounds. You ask about Tom Silk in America and they'll tell you. Yes, that one is my best; £27,000 wo raked in for the 'orspital. I think I got a cousin in Noo Zealand, in them parts where they don't boil no kettles, alez 'as plenty of 'ot water, so they tells me. Oh, well, everyone to 'is taste." Did ho mean Rotorua? —M. S. PRIMMER.