FIRST DAY IN LONDON

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 280, 26 November 1938, Page 3

FIRST DAY IN LONDON

"U7ERE you overwhelmed with » » the size of London?" my friends asked me. "Were you very lonely? Did you get lost? Were you homesick? Did you get dazed with the traffic?"

Ye*, yen, and vcs again. All of those tiling—every stranger is. That's the terrific tun of it all. It's amazing to lx> lonely and spine-tingling to be lost. When 11 smalltown person visits a city of H. 000,000 inluiliitants for the first time the mental horizon has to stretch a good deal, with consequent bewilderment. But yon can't see the whole 8,000,000 at once and in the meantime the little thingn yon encounter actually tuke up more of the horizon.

I ho morning tub is (lie first surprise, when you wrestle with water which will not lather, either hot or cold. After 'Irving yourself you find the heavy lime content leaves a fine deposit in all the little crevice* on the skin surface. You look palely white. However, the shock of having old vellum in place of my usual hide did riot intimidate me, hut I couldn't help seeing the reason for the world-wide joke about the Englishman and his tub. You don't bath for pleasure in T/ondon. Tt is a ritual entailing hard work, a solemn battle against the grimo of the metropolis. With all modern appliances and a decent-sized bath to wallow iii, I made a poor show-

By--Mamie J. Sparrow

ing in this surely unnecessarily ot*finate water. How the poor creature managed in his proverbial tub in a mystery. A revolt against the physical effort to get clean was most likely responsible for the great pioneering colonial outburst <i thrust to find some place where one could start the day with less fatigue. Just taking the course of least resistance. After the bath came breakfast. This was amusing. I sat at a table for two and was confronted with the upside down half of a newspaper. There were dozen* of others round the room. My companion did not speak from behind his rampart, probably because he .had not been introduced but I was impressed with his manipulation of the paper at table. He must be simply outstanding in a crowded tube. As for me, I take my newspaper privily at home on the sitting room floor, where 1 can get plenty of arm movement, after a chequered career of sopping up all the or scattering dirty lefts, in the bus. t rom necessity I became quite good at reading other people's papers ufiside down. Jt was unusual to find anyone

ready to turn over when T was, but this particular man was marvellous. We kept neck and neck. Before taking ilie plunge alone info London tin flic from t lie cloistered calm of this hotel, I took a self-conscious look at, my street map. (You 10.-e this self-consciousness rapidly and will yank out the old bus and tube majw anywhere, any time, plaster them against a shop window or stop on a safety zone and pore.) I decided to walk jauntily to Xew Zealand House, 415, The Strand, to establish an address. I say 415 deliberately; it was like No. 10, Downing Street to us. We used to yell at someone on a departing bus: "See you at 3 to-morrow at 41" and it was so. But just at the moment here was I walking down Southampton How, making for Aldwich and the Strand. Jt was an enormous thrill, looking at people and buildings, seeing street unfiles 1 had had a book knowledge of for years, coining true, and being awed by the silent cfliciency of the traffic. Not a sound of a horn in all that throng. The streets, red with double decked buses, arc the life blood of this huge city. Standing on the corner of Holborn and Kingswav 1 took its steady pulse as it passed the policeman in strong, urging spurt*. The sturdy old heart of London pushed it along those street veins and capillaries.

At New Zealand House I burst into a. bevy of fellow travellers. Yesterday we had said good-live with the utmost feeling; to-day we hailed each other with amazed recognition across the foyer, and "oyed" down the stairs like a bunch of school kids.

The thrill of seeing a familiar face (though it might, be one you long to alter) or hearing a voice you know (despite it having rasped your ears for weeks) is something which always bowls over a stranger in a strange land. Anyhow, it was all terribly jolly. We put our names down for every function and felt enormously important. After all this, most said profuse good-byes and surged out into the street again, going their several ways. But half an hour later we "coo-ecd" wildly to each other across Trafalgar Square or later on met at various banks or under Eros— laughed helplessly and said some more good-byes. How silly it was! London was small aft er all.

Even the simple job of telephoning was a lot of fun. The London automatic 'phone is an amazing arrangement couched round the correct, manipulation of buttons A and B. These algebraic characters do everything but answer back. It is only their strict sense of the "right thing to do." which holds them back. Button A is awfully nice because it connects you, if you press when you are told with your co-re. but button B is reallv the most fun. When

it is pressed all your pennies come tuinblling back to you down a slot, and you start all over again. I never quite gave up hope that it would turn into a fruit machine with ultra generous impulses. However —.

The various exchanges have place names such as Regent or Ambassador. You dial the first three letters of the name then your four numbers, but as the letters are in the same little holes on the dial as your numbers it takes you all your time keeping your eve on the ball. How in the world the telephone itself knows when you are dialling figures or when letters is beyond me quite. I guess it must be just one of those things.

Funnier still is tTic telephone book. I looked around and around. Could one of those city directory-like tomes be it? Levering one off the slielf I staggered to a seat and looked for O. Heavens! what a lot of B's. My hat, look at the H'.s and J's. Miles of tliem. Not much room left for the rest of the alphabet. I thought. Then, amazingly, it was the end of the book. What a have! It only went up to L. So I levered another tome down, turning meat chunks of pages this time. Quite the old hand, you know. After 10 minutes or so of this kind of l>v-play T found the right number, then "urnphed" the !>ooks hack on the shelf and was just going to dial, steadily muttering my live things all the time, when someone through the next door glass petition grimaced at me. I "'Mumlied" it' back at her and promptly forgot, my numbers. Down came the book again. Oh well, time is really no object. I still have my full five months' holiday practically I intact!