GAIETY AT COSTER BALL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 207, 1 September 1932, Page 5

GAIETY AT COSTER BALL.

MEMORIES OF EONDON.

• FATE OF A VEGETABLE CART

the gaiety of Hampstead Heath on August bank holiday was captured at the Coster Ball last night. Perhaps the only thing missing was a "coconut shy" and a roundabout. Plenty of local colour and a veritable assault on the eardrums of Cockney accents were the background for fast and furious fun. The vegetable carts drawn by mokes, who were obviously feeling their oats, were soon depleted, and the air at one time was thick with the smell of elderly cabbages and languid lettuces.

Some tradesmen must have sold out their stock of pearl buttons, judging by the display on waistcoafc.s and jackets, while pretty women did not hesitate to encase lovely legs in thick cotton stockings. Supper was a hearty meal, the backbone being baked potatoes and sausages roasted over a brazier. The sight of the old cans with pierced sides and blazing coal brought back vivid memories of London on a grey November day.

At one stage in the evening .the legal owner of a vegetable cart was seen to be in difficulties when attempting to negotiate the back stairs single-handed. Two willing and stalwart costers eagerly offered to take the cart down for him, and, with the assistance of a small, bewildered boy, succeeded in jamming it into a turn of the staircase so successfully that for a time nothing could move it. The perspiring and unhappy owner was in angry despair, but one of the pair, whose hip pocket sported a drooping bunch of celery, at last thought of a manoeuvre which released the cart and its contents with disconcerting abruptness.