PERSONALITY OF THE WEEK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 125, 28 May 1932, Page 8

PERSONALITY OF THE WEEK.

Captain P. Burges Watson, D.5.0., R.N., is tlie new Commodore of the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy. His father was a rear-admiral and his NO. 341. mother was born in Auckland. Hβ has been thirtytwo years in the Royal Navy, served successively on the Royal yacht and as flag lieutenant to Rear-Admiral S. Login and RearAclmiral W. B. Fisher. From 1909 for ten years he commanded torpedo destroyers. For his war service he was admitted to the DJ3.O. and mentioned in dispatches. He lias commanded H.M.s. Calodon, has been Naval Assistant to the Second Sea Lord, and before coming to New Zealand commanded H.M.s. Nelson. Yes, ho has played Rugby, and in 1908 wore the English rose and was an international player. He shoots, rides, fishes, golfs and yachts.

Do you like lambs' tails? Not Lamb's "Tales from Shakespeare," but the woolly appendages snipped from the living lamb and

immured in a pie? In the LAMBS' TAILS, lamb-docking season London swell eating places put on lamb tail pie as a gTeat delicacy, but a London brother complains that tail pie is no longer available, the farmers nowadays snipping the caudal appendages while the lam'bs are so young that their tails are not worth cooking. Any colonial person who has witnessed the' snipping of millions of lambs' tails and has eeen the severed members dotting the floors of the pens will probably eschew this delicacy on the ground that though the tail, is dead the lamb which owned, it still blea'teth. Lambs thus early deprived of their tails are less fussy about it than is a human patient who hae been surgically explored, and usually return to mother instantly, wagging the stump and begging for refreshment and maternal solace.

There had been some small argument amongst mariners who had come across the word "shippen," presuming that it had some-

thing to do with those A WOOLLY SHIP, who go down to the eea in ships and have their business on the great waters. So one hoary seafarer tacked towards an office where they keep a half-hundredweight dictionary and turned up the nautical word. The authority said that "shippen" meant a cowhouse, but the authority failed to remember that many of our words used even by philological professors are derived from local expression and archaic dialects. Shippen, then, is mere West Country for "sheep pen," just the same as window is a more modernisation of wind hole, the hole that the wind blows through. Nmv, children, you've often heard the expression, "Don't spoil the ship for a 'a'porth o' tar," and have believed that the ship referred to was a thing that floats on the water. The ship referred to is merely a sheep, as the West Country farmer will still tell you. And by the way, there is a New Zealand country family of) "Shipherds," merely a variation of the well-known nomenclature "Shepherd."

The subject of debate was smoking at work, most business firms objecting to employees incinerating the gladsome coffin nail in business hours; SMOKE-OH. thus, one assumes, saving

employees much money. The disputants spoke of many smokes, and one man who had smoked Honeysuckles at Paeschcndaele. mentioned the long cigarette holder common to the Army. It was necessary, he said, to refrain while on duty within sight of Fritz from exhibiting a light or even a glow, and it was found that the common cigarette might easily be introduced into the barrel of a rifle. The breech being opened, the smoker might suck the breech, thus drawing the refreshing smoke into the lungs. He might, too, shake the cigarette down the barrel into the breech and suck the paper. Another man who had smoked at Paardeburg mentioned the cavalry method of obtaining a. light at night time when matches were as scarce as thrift in a politician bound for Ottawa. A man would be detailed to carrjfire, for himself and mates and would out a bit off his horse rope (made of white cotton), and, lighting it in safety, carry the smouldering rope all through the night. jSTon-smokers apparently got their midnight sensation by chewing cordite gleaned from cartridges. People who have never lacked matches know not how precious they are, there being cases when a millionaire would give a considerable part of his fortune for a box. A traveller in the East mentions that he gave, as much as a farthing for six boxes and groaned that he had been charged three hundred per Cent too much. The man who bought 'em is mentioned in the "Surgeon's Log": "I've just bought these. They're Swedish matches, printed" in English, with a figure of an Arab woman on the cover, sold by a Chinaman in a Malay bazaar to an IrisTiman working for an English company in a Dutch colony. The Tower of Babel can't be far off."