RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 186, 4 May 1933, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current

Events LOCAL AND GENERAL (By Kickshaws.) With all this talk of free tariffs It seems surprising to hear that there are still people with not enough to eat. The Ottawa agreement, it is stated, will be strictly enforced concerning bagged beef. It sounds more like a case for the police. e * ♦ According to Hitler Germany, ifi not a second-class nation. According to French experts her ambitions might get her there any day. News that a wealthy widow has chartered an aeroplane in order to search for a lost oasis in the middle of a rather dull desert indicates that the search for lost things still continues. It does not seem to matter how uninteresting the thing may be that is lost. The fact that it is lost is sufficient incentive for someone to look lor it For example, no sooner had Darwin, or someone, discovered a missing link —that is, discovered that a link was missing—than people who were not even capable of finding their own collar studs set out to search for the missing link in quite the most inaccessible corners of the uncivilised world. They never found the missing link. Partly one would think because they looked in such unlikely places. Under the dressing table never seems to have entered their heads as a likely place.

• ♦ ♦ In addition to missing links, and things of that nature, that are always being looked for by earnest seekers there are other lost things in this world that refuse to be found. In spite of the fact that a German professor brought back some original samples of lost. Atlantis in a gladstone bag, he could persuade nobody that further search was unnecessary. People are still looking for lost Atlantis just as others are still looking for King Solomon’s mines, Alexander’s grave, woolly rhinoceroses and Davey Jones. It is stated on reliable authority that searchers after the last-named individual are now hot on the scent. Although they have not actually found Davey Jones in person, quite a number have found his locker.

So far nobody has found Mrs. Grundy. Now and again people are found so akin to that dame that searchers have mistakenly imagined they were about to gain their ambition. Moreover, search is still continuing for the average-man. This gentleman is extraordinarily difficult to find. In addition to knowing all the laws and breaking none, his actions in the hundred and one dilemmas that beset life are invariably correct. Except that it is suspected that he is a close relative to that inferior individual the nian-in-the-street. little, else is known about him.

The hoaxes at present being perpetrated in Auckland are of a type that was once common in England. In fact, the great Berners Street hoax is typical of the methods employed. This practical joke, which was perpetrated at the begining of last century, probably holds first place in the history of hoaxes. Three confederates dispatched 4,000 letters to various persons asking them to call under various pretences at the house of a lady who lived in Berners Street. London. As a result. sweeps, professors, aud loads of coal concentrated on the luckless woman. Cooks with massive wedding cakes, tailors, bootmakers, undertakers with coffins, draymen with beer barrels, all fought to reach the-house. Medical men with instruments for the amputation of limbs jostled with clergymen and artists for admission. At noon 40 fishmongers, followed by as many butchers joined in the fray. A little later the Lord Mayor himself arrived in state. In an opposite window i the conspirators rocked with merriment at the confusion. They were never brought to book.

Within reason practical jokes are enjoyed in every country, especially by those not concerned. Even in this hard-working Dominion, such sobermindeil individuals as Members of 'Parliament enjoyed to the full _ their “Act for Washerwoman” joke in the early ’nineties. In this amusing bill detailed definitions were given of “mangles.” “wash,” and “washerwomen.” Under the bill prospective washerwomen had to send in applications for a licence to the Minister of Public Works. On the Continent of Europe the standard hoax seems to be a review of troops by a person representing himself to be a cousin of some reigning monarch. This type of joke has proved surprisingly successful. One pastmaster even went so far as to decorate an American general and his staff on the Rhine for their excellent work. In Germany the especial joke is impersonating burgomasters.

An old bushman has sent along the following somewhat, ironical suggestions for trampers, who may become, if not lost, at least objects of search. He says: “About fifty years ago I was a bullock driver iu the Northern Wairoa country. There was ’some’ bush in those days. The bullocks were turned out with bells on their necks for weeks to have a spell, and they wandered far. Finding them again all depended on the dog. He could hear a bell 3 miles on the wind and a mile against it. By following the direction he took you would get within hearing, as the dog would work the bullocks towards you. To save trouble with trampers in the future, I would suggest putting a bullock bell round their necks before they are set loose in the bush. A few trained dogs can be kept to round them ’n later on in the week. An inspector could be employed to wander over the hills and see that, they kept their bells ringing.’’

Hardy Dunedin fishermen who ventured out in the recent, storms are welcome to the large profits that they have made on their catch. What they gain on the roundabouts they will assuredly lose sooner or later on the swings. Indeed, one trawler in the North. Sea after a week’s work returned to port with nothing better to show for its trip than a rusty lady’s bicycle fished up mysteriously off the Dogger Bank. Another fishing vessel, after a voyage of 4000 miles in Greenland waters, returned despondently to Grimsby with one halibut. This realised seven shillings. The cost of the fishing expedition worked out at £lOOO. On the other hand a swimmer at Amlierley Beach. Canterbury, dived into .. wave and emerged the other side with a herring nearly eighteen inches long, trapped in his bathing costume.