GLOOM AND RAIN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 27, 1 February 1930, Page 2 (Supplement)

GLOOM AND RAIN.

(By Nessie Harrison, 39, Ardmore Road, Heme Bay, age 16.) It's all very well for optirrysts to say there is a silver lining to every cloud. Frankly I don't believe it. The very clouds themselves discredit that saying. The sky is black as ink and the rain is pouring down with a steady beat that gets one's nerves on edge. - Everybody is bad tempered. Why should they be otherwise when their pleasure is spoilt by the weather? One is forced to get out of bed and don weather-proof coat, and carry an umbrella to work. Weather-proof- coat, did I say? "This coat is guaranteed to keep out the rain," says the shop assistant when one buys a rain-coat. Most likely the weather will be ostentatiously fine for weeks after such a purchase. Then when rain eventually comes one puts on one's coat, with a glow of satisfaction at the remembrance of the eh opassistant's promises. One arrives home from work, tired and wet and thoroughly unhappy. Perhaps the coat does live up to its reputation and conscientiously keeps the rain from penetrating to one's skin. But to what effect ? Dribble,, dribble, dribble, dribbles the rain from the bottom of one's coat into the tope of one's footwear." Stockings are wet through and one's legs feel as if sheets of ice are'hanging round them. One trudges at last, cheerfully (?) through the' splashes down the garden path, day-dreaming of warm fires and comfy slippers. To what end? The coalman has forgotten to call and the puppy, has chewed up one's slippers. This rain!