RANDOM SHOTS

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 179, 30 July 1932, Page 2 (Supplement)

RANDOM SHOTS

«MDEiC

I Aeroplanes are much cheaper, and the \ cost of gging up is coming down. ■ A shark has been seen off Talcapuna. ! And with the Courts so busy, too! Cablegram: "Foreign investors are 1 flocking to London." That's capital! There are new elastic socks that keep themselves up. Socks, I said —not stocks. Yes, yes. If the Geneva Agreement results in the limitation of arms it will be a great feat. Experts suggest the use of large numbers of turkeys to eat the grass grub. Oh, Christmas! Curiously enough, although working butchers are demanding more wages, none of them objects to a cut. Football headline, "Backs Well Marked." This clawing another chap's jersey off in the scrum must cease. Since the junker threat of a restored monarchy, large numbers of Germans are emigrating to other lands. Hans across the sea. There are varying degrees of shoplifting. Sometimes a woman does it, I

and then again a man lifts the shop ■with a jack. People are forbidden to send matches by post to workers in relief camps. Not, of course, that the workers cannot do their own striking. A citizen remarks that if anything will take the conceit out of a man it is travel. I do hope this paragraph will never reach Mr. Coates. Excellent Maori relics are often found, and now, perhaps, the largest mere ever unearthed has come to light. I wonder if this is the stone end? Maybe we are slipping back to a prewar level, but it will be a long time yet before a boy can earn a sixpence holding a horse in Queen Street. Five thousand doctors attended the B.M.A. centenary in London. Those who did not find their names in the main list will still take an interest in the appendix. It is nice to think that the New Zealand coat of arms is to be emblazoned on railway carriages. There is no significance in the fact that the moa is extinct. And on Thursday I met a man who thinks we ought to give New Zealand back to the Maoris. What the Maoris have been doing to deserve this he did not say. Every cloud has a silver lining. Men on the Molvneux have recently found some nice gold, and now one learns that a One Tree Hill digger has unearthed a half farthing. I told you recently about the French composer who assaulted a critic with a roll of music. I neglected to tell you, however, that there was a foot of lead piping in the roll. I've met such a lot of ratepayers who are delighted that their rates are to be just the same as if there had been no 10 per cent cuts. They absolutely love to help their bleeding boroughs. Extract from meat cablegram: "The inferior quality of African cattle renders them unfit for chilling." But as the dark African cattle farmer usually swaps them merely for wives, why worry? An American paper notes that Ivar Kreuger, the notable match company promoter, was "a small, shy man." He went on getting shyer and shyer for years and years, until he was shy a hundred and sixty million dollars. Yes, the Germans have a sense of humour, too. This from a Berlin paper: "After long study of disarmament it was decided at the British Foreign .Office that the German delegates must appear in striped trousers and tall hats." Thus a Nelson woman who admitted in Court that she drank one bottle of stout every week, and bought tobacco for her pipe: "A glass of beer is better for my health than a smart frock for my back, and the dochter tould me a poipa is good for my nerves." Apropos the secret building of battleships in Italy (since denied), Mussolini has lately advised Italians to "eat more meat," _ his contention being that vegetarians are not fierce enough. The Argentine, therefore, notes with pleasure that there is a "meat wave" in Italy. Speaking of the marriage in the pakeha way of Maoris already married in the Maori method, it was usually the okl-tinio chiefs who were polygamists. \ou remember the story of counsel who soulfiilly asked: 'What is the penalty of bigamy?" And the reply of the bigamist: "Two mothers-in-law."