...Of Many Things

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28257, 20 April 1957, Page 10

...Of Many Things

WHEN the next session of ’’ Parliament opens on June 26 members will have new seats of foam rubber and green leather to sit on. The seats are fitted with baffles to protect members’ legs from draughts. That’s all very well. Why hasn’t something been done about the hot air iri the House of Representatives?

TTOLIDAYS are not always what they seem. The Walrus has a colleague who prefers to spend his annual leave at home. But this year he made a change. “I’ve been round the lakes,” he told his friends. “Which ones?” he was asked. “Bottle Lake and Victoria Lake,” he replied.

SEVENTY Australian mothers-in-law are leaving Sydney next month in a chartered aircraft to visit their daughters in the United States and Canada. Some Christchurch husbands consulted by The Walrus this week think such flights should be encouraged as long as no return tickets are sold.,

rpHE Prime Minister fished the Rakaia river assiduously for two days last week-end, but was unable to persuade one salmon to rise to his lures. Fishermen will be pleased that Mr Holland, like the salmon, resisted temptation. He could well have sought the assistance of the Minister of Marine, whose department has some interest in a salmon trap at Highbank, and returned to Wellington with a fish and a fish story.

THE Inland Revenue DepartA ment is planning to recruit women to specialise in tax-gather-ing work. It should have no difficulty in finding suitable married women with years of experience in going through pockets on the end of the bed.

“TRACKING Buses Disliked,” a headline in a contemporary this week. Naturally: It’s much more exciting to back horses.

INFORMATION please. If a pubA lisher is given a grant by the State Literary Fund to publish a book which then makes a good profit, does he repay the grant?

A COW from Kaikoura was " knocked down for £3l 2s 6d at the Addington market this week. By an approved humane method, we hope.

DOME, one of the horses running at Riccarton on Monday, is trained by R. Bums. Punters hope the jockey will not be fiddling at the start of the Courtenay Handicap.

“XTEW Look” New Zealand potatoes were sold at auction in Wellington last week for the first time. Presumably their eyes were brighter.

TF reports of frosts in ChristA church this -winter appear just a little condescending, blame the reporters who have been to the Antarctic this summer. A frost is the only assignment befitting their newly-acquired special knowledge.

THE consumption of cigarette A tobacco in New Zealand has increased 50 per cent, in the last seven years. Obviously the lung cancer theorists need a public relations officer.

A UTOMATION is to be used thia year to handle thd marks and fill in the cards of School Certificate candidates. Some prospective candidates already looking with no great enthusiasm to the end of the year are wondering whether automation could answer the papers as well.

WHO said you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket? A poultry-keeping friend of oura thought all his hens had suddenly stopped laying. Lifting a gardening basket from a hook in the fowlhouse ceiling, 10ft up, he found a dozen eggs. They were not cartoned. ,

“T>AD Intelligence Blamed for said a headline in the cable news this week. Well, of course, that’s the American view.

THE Mayor of Wellington (Mr A F. J. Kitts) has discovered that Wellington enjoys a distinction not possessed elsewhere in the Commonwealth: it has eight pipe bands. Does Mr Kitts really mean “enjoys.”

PROM the United States comes A a that a dangerous cat has been roaming in the nightclub area of Miami, Florida. It has been described as a half-grown South American ocelot. Surely it must be a hep-cat.

r pHE Royal Navy so far seems to A have accepted philosophically the wearing of duffel coats by poets, painters, and students of both sexes. But the changes which the useful garment has been suffering in the name of fashion are calculated to produce strange nautical oaths from even the mildest matelot. With enthusiastic American assistance the duffel coat has now become a sports warmer, a gate-hinge coat, a bench warmer, a hip toaster, and even a peg jac or clipper jac. Once upon a time it had only one colour. Now it can be scarlet, forest green, russet brown, or lake blue. —The Walrus