As I Hear.. Oooh, Commentators

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32210, 31 January 1970, Page 17

As I Hear.. Oooh, Commentators

(B|) J.H.E.S.) Having spent many hours listening to N.Z.B.C.’s Sports Round-up, I offer some gleanings. Cricket I had pleased myself with the observation that commentators had pretty well broken themselves of the silly habit of having bowlers “operating” from this end’ or that; but I was jolted by one of those operating at Cook’s Gardens, Wanganui. He had every bowler operating away like crazy. But I forgave him, happily; for he brought to proof an old theory of mine. Why are bowlers alone said to “operate,” why is not the wicket-keeper said to “operate” behind the stumps, the slips fielders said to “operate” in their place, and the other fieldsmen in their set positions? This Wanganui commentator answered my dream. Spinks pushed gently to mid-wicket, where the fielding was done by Tonks, “who operates in that position.” My heart leapt up.

The fielding was done by Tonks. Nobody now fields. Everybody (or nearly everybody) is said to “do the fielding.” If I may quote myself, “I say, ’Bah’ 1" I have noticed again my friends’ reluctance to use simple possessives. They do not say, "returned into Milbum's gloves”—why not “to Milburn?''—but “into the gloves of Milbum." This is an odd trick; but the commentators have an august preceptor. Many years ago I read an essay by that charming critic and poet, Alice Meynell, in which she remarked that Gibbon, master of the stately style, liked to end a sentence with an “of” phrase: "of the Master of the Adriatic." And it is so. Tennis.

Very good, especially so in a game so fast that it is hard for a commentator to keep up with the play. But I have been amused by a trick of the commentators at the Stanley Street courts in Auckland. At any dramatic moment, they say "Ooohl” So girlish, don’t you think.

Racing. I unload an old grievance. Why do the racing commentators have us waiting “on” instead of "for” the judge’s decision or the dividends? They always do. * ¥ *

I have often admired the speed and dexterity with which hands (I mean of course, operators) ot the' Parks and Reserves Department plant out border and other plants. But now I have a puzzle. When the job is done, you would not be surprised if a few plants failed to strike and died. I most recently watched the bordering of a plot by the Arbitration Court building on the newly reopened Whitmore Street; and it was neatly and speedily done. But how do you explain it that the plants that perished were not odd ones, here and there, but always in sequences of two to four? In this horticultural vein let me say that I recently saw two gardens, in one of which my attention was directed to the delightful French marigolds; in the other, to the also delightful African marigolds. I murmured my enthusiastic murmurs. But I suppressed my demur, which is that the marigold is neither French nor African but Mexican. * ¥ ¥

One of my correspondents, not at all given to explosions, has complained to me (I) about metal caps, intended to open a bottle, but twining and twining without splitting and opening; (II) about corroded corks, which don't yield to the corkscrew but crumble; and (III) about' a printed code of measures, in which dessertspoons were labelled tablespoons. As for (I), there is nothing for it but to use some tool that will open the jamb. The point of a knife; a pair of pliers. As for (II), Yes.: First of all, use a corkscrew, the screw of which is flanged. If that fails, the cork erumbles, and leaves crumbled, then strain the wine through a coarse - linen. •>.:

My best corkscrew 'is flanged. It works on two

levers. When the screw is driven .-to, - the levers are high. Then they are depressed and the cork rises. It is i very seldom broken. If it is, then strain.

As for (III), I have no information and no advice. But whoever issues, in print, tables of weights and measures, and bungles them, is open to challenge and should be challenged. ¥ ¥ ¥

Is anybody short of an anecdote about modern music? I supply it from a 10-year-old interview with Schneider of the Budapest String Quartet. They were playing a very difficult modern work. The four started off together and finished together but in between, as Mischa Schneider says, they were chasing each other. “But 1 nobody in the audience,” he went on, “noticed anything. That's the beauty of modern music.” And salut to C.F.B. ¥ ¥ ¥

I see advance notices of a new James Bond film. Does everybody know that lan Fleming described James Bond as “a dull, uninteresting man to whom things happened?” Or that he named him from a book called “Birds of the West Indies,” by James Bond? ¥ ¥ ¥

I have missed a centenary. It was in 1869 that a London police station was established in Hyde Park.