THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 290, 8 December 1932, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

Talking about cricket —and everybody seems to be—a friend reminds one of the "Punch" ioke illustrated by Frank Reynolds. The typical village team THE LOCAL of comic journals is a LARWOOD. man short. A small person, grotesquely attired with a butterfly tie and costume to match has been put on to bowl as a l&st rcsouiOG. do you bowl?" asks the captain. "Oh, like Lanvood," responds the last hope. The Nawab of' Pataudi (the English cricketer), who will not come to New Zealand, appears to bo fair game for the Australian barracker, lus high rantc BARRACKERS. and immense wealth protecting him not at all. The cheerful Aussie has awarded him many names, mostly in reference to the fact that he is almost as dark as a Queensland white man, but someone at a recent match found a new name for him. During a slow period of a o-anie a voice sang out, "Have a hit, Potato. The Nawab has informed New Zealand over the air that he really has no objection to bein" called most of the names the barrackers use, 'but thinks "Gandhi" is a bit over the odds. "Anything but that," says he. Chess players will be delighted to hear that interest is growing in their fascinating pastime and that in the view of some people it has been exalted to a .THE ATHLETES, place among the classic sports. A telegram had arrived in a newspaper office relative to this ore at subject and was given to a messenger for immediate delivery to the literary expert capable of dealing with so serious a matter. The messenger glanced rapidly at the opening chorus, and, seeing the word "chess" prominently displayed; at once delivered it to the athletics department. Once a hero always a hero. Reported that New Zealand veterans of a war who met to celebrate an anniversary sat and smoked clay pipes, recalling the gritty THE CLAY PIPES, past when men deliberately and in millions went about with these articles (with a sealingwaxed end) between their teeth. Long before you can remember, my the viveur who entered a victualling establishment for half a pint of ale would demand a clay with it the real beginning of the commercial gesture by which the purchaser of a pound of tea was awarded a cup and saucer. In these days when it is sweet to recall the good old times, millionaire directors of great British companies become romantic over the annual churchwarden, and even Mr. Baldwin has been seen photographically with the long historic stem between his smiling lips. One of the pastimes of old clay-pipe days was. to cherish a pipe the more as it grew dirtier. A black pipe which ought to have been white was displayed with as much pride as if it were an old master. Old hands addicted to the sea and other sports used to soak a new clay pipe in rum to "break it in." Working men used to practically hold seances for the exhibition of seasoned pipes. There is the pathetic story of the Irishman who turned up to his work one morning looking frightful. Asked to explain, he replied, "Shure misfortunes niver come single. 'Twas only last wake Oi lost me poor woife—and now Oi've broken me old dhudeen." Casting the eye of the mind round the tobacco-stained lips of Auckland, one recalls only one habitual clay. It 'is an inch and a half long with a rubber tip, and is in the mouth of a man six feet two with an 1804 tailcoat, pegtop pants and a wideawake hat with inch air holes punched all over it —all happy memories of the past.

Several old soldiers who hope they will never have to wear it or any other uniform write to know exactly what the British High Command is, doing to MAN AND HORSE. Tommy's uniform. Tommy is to wear a turn-down collar, a waterproof deer-stalker hat that can be stuffed in a pocket, and a khaki pullover jacket, sleeves buttoned at the wrist, large pockets such as Brasn Hats wear, coat pleated at the hack, a coat collar that can be raised and buttoned for cold necks, bronze buttons — no button sticks, no polish —web gaiters superseding puttees. Mess tin and water bottle not jangling about on straps, ibut carried in the pack. New bayonet, short and like a spike— four-sided, with the old "gravy grooves." The H.C. hasn't decided about the trousers yet, but very likely they'll have cuff bottoms and a hard crease. As horses haven't been entirely abolished in the new Army, one thoughtful correspondent wants to know if any better means of watering the noddy on the inarch has been found. He remembers a blistering day on the march to the relief of Kimberley when it was arranged that every man should carry water for his horse —largely at a gallop over burnt or burning country. The ordinary canvas feed bag was filled with water, the mouth secured with string, rope or strap, and hitched on to the horse. At the gallop the •bag of water'sloshed from horse to man and was as awkward and leaky an extra burden as ever horseman, carried, especially as the H.C. served out six-pound tins of bully beef to be shared among four men —but carried, of course, by one in every four. The old trooper mentions that not a single horse had a drink out of any of the feed bags, and that about seventy per cent of the huge ironclad squares of bully were necessarily thrown away, after wounding man and liorse.

"Dry, isn't it? I wish it would rain—my strawberries And the other, looking up at the morning sky, said, "I hope it won't rain till after Sunday— HAY TIME. my liar ," and so forth, showing that what's one man's meat is another man's poison, and that if every man could order his own sample of weather there would be a deuce of a mess. Talking about grass on the stem and hay in the stook, the man who wants strawberry weather became momentarily reminiscent on hay in another land. It was a corker year for grass on the Murrumbidgee farm, and old Nathaniel, the presiding cocky, had gathered together a motley gang of haymakers—some of whom had never seen snakes before. During the ensuing days of fifteen hours each-— thirty shillings a week and tucker—the hardened Aussies remained undisturbed, but the newcluims (escaped sailors, for the most part) could never get used to the frequent forkfuls of hay containing serpents slithering off the loads and winding in and out among the stooks. Some of l the men must have lost as much as half an hour a day escaping from serpents, much to the disappointment of Nathaniel, who expected "a fair day's work for a fair day's pay." The men's hut, built to accommodate four gentlemen, gave sanctuary for twelve, who wooed the rosy god of sleep stretched on the dirt floor. Snakes love warmth and invaded the hut, to slip under the edge of a blanket. Slithering over the dirt floor, tile approaching serpents could not be heard, and so a genius of a studious nature conceivect the plan of spreading newspapers on the floor so that when the snakes slithered they could be heard. The newspapers, by the way, were every morning collected for use as wrappers for lunch in the hayfield and carefully returned as snake warners at sundown. When the harvest was over Nathaniel carefully gleaned the papers and saved them for another harvest.

THOUGHTS FOR TO-DAY. There are plenty of things wrong in the world, but they arc not hopelessly wrong.—Sir Oliver Lodge,