THE WALK TO THE OFFICE

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 70, 16 December 1929, Page 13

THE WALK TO THE OFFICE

FULL OF CHANGES

WHAT ONE MAY SEE AND HEAR

(By

E.A.A.)

A business man complained to me recently that his daily walk to the oflice was the worst part of his day. “Frankly,” he said, “it bores me stiff—nothing ever changes—the same old shops—the same old streets—for ever and ever and ever.” Until he drew my attention to this matter I had accepted the daily walk to the office in the nature of a habit —like undressing or winding a watch. The shops were there, but one never looked at them. But lam wrong. I have discovered that unconsciously I have formed a habit of telling the seasons by an automaton in a shop window. In winter it smokes its cigarette, real smoke, inanely clothed in a dinner jacket or tails. | I know when summer has arrived, or at any rate early snring, by the fact that it smokes its cigarette in tennis clothes—just as inanely—just as fatuously. In autumn it smokes in a lounge suit. Besides, I have discovered that other shops—half conscious phantasies—help to fix fur coats, heavy shoes, waterproofs, or the lighter gossamers of summer on the mind. “It is summer,” I say to myself, or “how winter lingers in the windows —th: ■ style, real fur—only 90 guineas.” My friend's complaint has in fact made me discover that there is change in the daily walk to the office: but slow. The movement of a glacier cannot be observed by taking a daily walk down it: to see a plant grow it is useless to stare at it. The walk to the office, is like that. Things change, the seasons come and go—slowly—there is change every day. Unceasing Change. Perhaps the most noticeable and certainly the most, spectacular changes take place in a certain shoe shop that I have passed something like 3000 times. My complaint about this shoe shop is that it never stops changing. Only ‘ yesterday its row of naked synthetic feet, cut off at the ankle, had grown the worst crop of corns on them I have seen any-, where. Not so long ago they were growing nasty-looking three-inch brown blisters—callouses they were labelled. Before that a huge hammer was hammering at a skeleton foot via the bone that ends-at the knee —to show what—l don't know—the thump, thump of the walk to: the office perhaps. Wc ought' to have rubber pavements. " Then . these • things wouldn't happen. There is no mistaking these corns and blisters even at night. Bike a lighthouse, they light up from inside, blink-blink balefully, never the same from day to day, never cured,. always breaking out in new places with new and more dreadful illuminated foot troubles. I never knew before what agony, my fellow-walkers must suffer, without resorting to such an obvious relief from misery as amputation. But the shoe shop wouldn’t encourage that. A pair of skis rests in another window. Their position never changes. They are neglected, like an eagle in a zoo. Now and again they are given new pictures to look at: pictures of mountains and cairns, and lakes, and ravens in contemplation on crags, of Rotorua in eruption, of wahines,. and Polynesians, and tikis, of cows at milking time. Those poor skis react upon me differently every day! Skis —Switzerland—snow (there’is never any nice snow in those pictures; it clings to impossible crags), slides, sledges “la luge” “ach tung” “get out of the way confound you” dancing, flirtations, and all the empty nothings of idle people out to enjoy themselves at hundreds of francs a day. I hope the man who put those skis there has forgotten about them. If they were moved my walk to the office would be ruined. Poor things, those skis, so out of place, so suggestive. Clashing Music. Every day massed batteries of modern electrically reproducing gramophones kindly play me to my office along an avenue of clashing music. “The Skat-, ers.” “Peer Gy nt,” “Wurlitzer organs,” “When Day is Done,” "Get Out and Get Under the Moon,” interwoven with a deepvoiced gentleman apparently advertising in song a disreputable place called Alabama lull of croon ings and meanings and “mammies” and babies. I have never visited Alabama. Perhaps one day the Mississippi will overflow on to it and make my walk to the office that much the easier. The Disappearing Trick. But look, the radio shop that only opened a fortnight ago has disappeared. Just vanished. It is not there, but it was yesterday. Have strong silent men slunk in during the night and walked off with those curly loudspeakers, those rows of valves and batteries and wires and flashing lights. Why? Perhaps they sold so many radio sets to the Byrd Expedition they are now financially independent. Who knows? A similar abrupt change has occurred to the ironmongers, who filled their windows with, shiny saws and drilling machines. They, too, have gone, before I had time to summon courage to buy one single drilling machine. Their window to-day is full of sections and real estate and “snips.” The Day of Progress. A huge gap in the serried ranks of glazed shop windows marks the progress of an old friend. Blank and Blank are expanding—yes, progress. Where Mr. Blank once walked, and rubbed his hands at you, strange men now drop cement and iron girders on you. Progress, yes. A row of notices tells all about it, “Glazed by Blank and C 0.,” “Lifts by Blank and Blank.” “Lighting by Blank, Blank and Blank,” “Decorations by Whom You Will,” “Drains by the City Council”—progress, change, expansion. It is absurd to say that the daily walk to the office has no change in it. Not only has it change but it is fraught with considerable danger. Ido not know if they have to ask the Mayor personally or if some evil person in an office just rings the bell and says, “Oh. Miss Smithers, tell the gang to tear up, hacfl down and fortify such and sueh a street.” At any rate, when things are slack, rust ,and decay, and all that sort of thing banging around, one finds the walk to the office barred by deep ditches, men with pneumatic terrors, bobbins of wire ten feet high, and little tents pitched here and there in true nomad style. Blowlamps, red-hot stoves, and enormous bludgeons litter the footpath. The walk to the office becomes an obstacle race—pah, no change indeed I