RANDOM SHOTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 253, 24 October 1936, Page 2 (Supplement)

RANDOM SHOTS.

(By "ZAMIEL.") | | ' I I | I !

Shoe repairs are dearer. £ for leather! In the local fish war the snapper seems to be the bone of contention. Headline: "Collision with Pole." Some of those fellows from Poland are tough guys to be up against. Three journalists are racing round the world in three weeks. Wherever did they borrow the money ? Headline "Polish Anti-Semitism." Polish it as you will, you will never rub the wickedness off it. A Canadian gold fossicker lost in the wilds was guarded by a bear. Gold finders from time to time have blessed the bulls, too. I understand that the German forces are to be fed on whale meat. Hitler has already sampled it, and spouted wonderfully after it. Another bottle lias drifted ashore with nothing but official documents. My thirst is becoming well-nigh intolerable. No more beachcombing. Lord Nuffield, who gives money away in lorry loads, said that it was beginning to bore him. Modesty alone has restrained me from cabling my address. Some 2Jd stamps mistakenly printed at Home are worth £5000. I learn that the perforations are excellent and the flavour of the gum nutty. The passion for being ahead of schedule continues this week. Horatio Nelson fought Trafalgar on October 21. Auckland's Trafalgar was t'vo days earlier. A Southern economist says it is not immigration but machinery that causes unemployment. That is so. There are wheels within wheels, even in Guvmint machinery. I regret having previously stated that Lord Nuffield had £15,000,000. I should have written £20,000,000, and added that he now takes cream in his porridge instead of milk. A plumber has been caught "redhanded" stealing cake. You remember the lines, "He put in his thumb and pulled out a plumb, and said, 'What a good boy am I'?" London says there never was so great a need for good cooks. I fear that the rush of good cooks to London from the shearing sheds and bush camps will leave our horny-handed hungry. A highly distinguished military medical officer visiting New Zealand has not seen a single angry face. Everyone is charming and happy. Perhaps the general hadn't been to the races when he was so kind. I learn that Barcelona is now normal, and there is short shrift for the "riffraff." Biff-raff, dear friends, are those people who are not on your side—and the mob arc the dirty, dogs who have the opposite Cause. There are thirty-seven million children attending the Sunday sthools of the world. Yet at one time kiddies used to throw stones at the statue of Robert Raikes,, the Gloucester printer, who invented these schools. Sawmills are buzzing merrily, the giants of the forest, are falling and, as the lusty carpenter hammers the nail into the myriad weatherboards, the passer-by should step aside smartly to escape the showers of sap.

The King of Italy, although he has four rows of war ribbon's, never goes to war. The only indication of a martial spirit is in a photo 'showing him walking down a street with a canon. Ferry fares are to increase. Dear me, I remember the time when one could fret a family ticket for a fiver —even if the family numbered twenty. I bad hard luck—hadn't got twenty at the time. It is feared that if we export fish from New Zealand we shall have too few for our half million people, one million usually going without. If the Pacific isn't l)ig enough to feed us, the Marine Department- will double the area.