DISCOVERING THE COUNTRY

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXIX, Issue 13307, 5 April 1941, Page 8

DISCOVERING THE COUNTRY

In the course of some interesting remarks on the prouiem of evacuation at Home, Country Life points out that it is not easy for those who have lived in or known the country all their lives to appreciate how completely foreign to townspeople the country can be. It points out that “a diverting—and instructive — anthology could be made of the lighter side of urban-rural contacts arising from evacuation. Last autumn a middle aged woman who travelled to Berkshire to visit her evacuated daughter of eleven, admitted that she herself had ‘never seen plums growing on trees before.’ The delight of children at seeing rabbits ‘alive. Mum, running about with their skins on’ is pathetic but is more excusable, perhaps, than the mistake of the Home Guard who thought that the regular churring of a nightjar in a copse must be a secret radio station sending messages to the enemy. On one farm a visit to the cowshed to see the cows fed with cake brought bitter disappointment to children who had never suspected that ‘cake’ might have more than one meaning: the kindly farmer so directed the line of retreat that it included the farmhouse kitchen, where crumbs more palatable than cotton or linseed were available. There have been childish refusals to drink milk: ‘Our milk comes in bottles, but I saw them squeeze that stuff from a cow! But a field of barley is reported to have caused great delight: ‘Coo, look! Shrimps! Let’s pick some and ’ave shrimps for tea’!”