POSTSCRIPTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 58, 10 March 1937, Page 10

POSTSCRIPTS

Chronicle and Comment

By Pekct Flack,

If polygamy becomes the law of the land in Germany, even the midwives will just have to look out. ■::- « * Maybe it, is. because our modern gaols are becoming more like home that fewer men are qualifying for them. ♦ * * The Prime Minister declares that he is fit enough t"> go eight r.ounds with any man. Beer, or brown bread, Mr. Savage? ' •st • * We are unreliably informed that one result of Mr. Semple's exhortations in the Public Works camps is that the "two-up" ring is deserted, and the men are playing patience like anything. ■ ■ ' * * * PHONE NUMBERS, PLEASE. " "C.F." has told us of having ' observed three ladies who used neither lipstick nor rouge, and who therefore looked fresh and beautiful. The undersigned would be glad if your correspondent would inform him where there may be seen these women, whose _ faces apparently bear no resemblance to a barn when first painted, and' whose mouths could not be thought of in connection with a slash in a leg. of beef. , CURIOUS. HEARD THIS ONE? Well, here's one for you, if you come under the running shoes of Bobby Semple. (It's not original so I don't like sending it along.) A shrewd gentleman of means left his car outside the Royal Oak at five o'clock. He retired at the six o'clock cry of "Time, gentlemen," and much to his annoyance he^ found a sticker on- his car, referring* to the fact that he had inadvertently parked his car over a fire plug. Nothing daunted, he left his car there, rang up the Taranaki St. P.S., and told them he'd lost' his car. In a few minutes he got a reply saying it was found. Wise guy, eh? Cheerio. "PIC." . : * * ♦ SAUSAGES IN SILK. So many sausages are eaten in Germany that supplies of skin from the pig are insufficient to enclose the sausage meat (according to "Hot Dog," Upper Hutt). Some factories are at their wit's end about the matter. An important factory in Bonn, however, has now solved the problem. The sausage meat is put in one end of the machine and comes out at the other clad in a skin of finest silk. The secret of the silk skin mixture is jealously guarded by its inventor, who claims that not only do silk-dressed sausages keep better, < but instead of breaking when cooking, the silk jacket expands and. the sausage retains its full flavour. The Bonn factory is turning out 60,000 artificial silk coats for sausages daily. Whether the skins are eatable or not seems a moot point, though they are^ claimed as "not interfering with the digestion"! ■ * » * POPE'S GOLDEN ROSE. In reply to R.J.M.: The papal custom of giving' a golden rose as a mark of special favour is centuries old. At first the ornament was a single bloom of wrought gold, coloured red; later, it became a branch with thorns, leaves, and flowers. The petals are decked'with genis and' one rose stands out from the rest. To Henry VIII of England (strange recipient, in view of his eventual relalions with" Rome!) Golden Roses were sent not once, but three times. Henry's were elaborate, nine-branched ornaments, the first resting on models of oxen, the second and third respectively on models of acorns and lions. If a rose is blessed in a particular year, 'and no one is judged worthy of it, it is laid up in the Vatican—somewhat as the Nobel Prize is "reserved' in similar conditions. Only twice has the present Pope bestowed this gift previously—first, to Queen Victoria of Spain, and secondly, to Queen Elizabeth of Belgium. , »■# * . . PEDICULOUS. "Starsan Stripes" (Masterton) asks: What about this one, Mr. Flage? Here it goes, then. By the way, Braley is one of America's liveliest jongleurs. Time was the word was never heard Except among the Low and Frowsy; The Social Cream would never dream Of saying "L y!" But its estate improves of late; No longer is it crude and blowsy; The "Most Correct and Circumspect Are using "L——y!" Makers of Art, the Ultra Smart, Intelligent^—lofty-browsy. Use, reaffirm, and love the term— 1.c., viz, "L y!" "Sour," "Cheesy," "Punk"—those words are sunk, ■ Dead, or in coma deep and drowsy. If you would ritz the common wits, You most say "L——y!" Still, though the Mot is all the go, This one protesting bard avows he Is bored a bit with hearing it, And thinks it's "L—-yl. BERTON BRALEY. #. « * "HAT" TRICKS. ' Dear Flage.-Now that the "shouting and tumult" of the Tests is behind us, it may prove,of■ Merest to recount what Neville Cardus the delightful cricket writer of the Manchester Guardian," had.to say, in .October last, of one of the. rising stars, in Australia's cricket firmament. As follows: "I saw Badcock for-the first time at the practice nets and at once I risk the prophecy that Badcock is one morning going to wake up, like Lord Byron, and find himself famous. After Badcock's great innings for his State team against" M.C.C., Cardus paid the following tribute to the Tasman-ian-—"Badcock played fine individual cricket; one of his pulls off Copson was Bradmanesque. . . . The bat in his hands is at one and the same time light and powerful, a sword and yet a cudgel. • His concentrated energy recalls Bradman and, as a patriotic Englishman, I protest that one Bradman is enough in any team. If Badcock does not develop into a great player, I will eat my hat; better and braver and more indigestible, I will eat Arthur Mailey's hat." • Ur.i! • P.S.—lf this form of penance for false prediction and broken promise should become the vogue, there is likely to be an epidemic of gastric troubles, with a high mortality rate, among over-sanguine company promoters and rash' politicians in particular, in view of the extreme futility of the human bipeds quoted and ■' wide variety of range in hats always available, including the "merry widow/ "tin," "brass," and octogenarian top. "And most virulent of all—the political veteran of three election campaigns, or more, which has stood "four-square to the "slings" and arrows of outrageous (mis)fortune in the form of wellaimed soft-"shelled" eggs whose flavour, perfume, antiquity, and action may be best described as musty, malodorous, . ancient, and malignant.