POSTSCRIPTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 85, 7 October 1941, Page 6

POSTSCRIPTS

Chronicle dnd Comment

BY PERCY FLAGE

The man who boasts of being hardheaded may be only a blockhead. « ♦ * Those dashing Hurricane boys certainly have an airy way with them. # ■ » ' ♦ They say that when a Nazi official is given a new post in Norway his next-of-kin are always informed. *,* * ■ Hori: A well-known writer says: % "The average woman has a vocabulary of only 800 words." It is a small stock, but, crikey, think of the turnover! * * *.■■■' Overheard as two old Scotswomen were trying to tidy up a bombed wrecked cottage: "Aweel, Maggie, thae bad blitzes. mak' ye forget the war, onywey." * #■..•■# INFORMATION. Charles Holland is the name of the singer in "Hullabaloo." A negro and a fine tenor, he sang "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny" and also an aria from "II Pagliacci." PICTUREGOER. ,* ♦ • ♦ * CORRECTION. Dear Sir,—ln your paper of Saturday, October 4, under Postscripts, "Names for God," you say that in Dutch "God" is spelled as "Godt." I beg to correct you; in my language His name is spelled in the same way as in English.—Yours, faithfully, TH. VAN EUPEN. # # ♦ THREE SIRENS. Dear Percy Flage,—ln answer to "Puzzled" in tonight's Column 8 re siren: There are three sirens, and one sirene (pronounced "sireen"). Of the three sirens, one is the well-known mermaid, etc., one is genus of. tailed Amphibians, including mud-eel, and ' the other is the well-known hooter or whistle. Now sirene is what is known in the musical world as a pitch pipe used in the tuning of wind instruments. The above is taken from NuttalTs ' Standard Dictionary. Kind regards to Column 8. HLA.M. With this the curtain drops. ♦ ';. ■■>■.■, ♦ VETERAN CATS. E.A.M. writes: I can furnish a similar incident to the cat that died in Remuera, aged eighteen. Our "Tom" was a well-known character in the neighbourhood, being often dressed in baby clothes and driven up and.down the lane by my little girl and her friends. He slept in his pram at night by her bedside, arid we could easily keep track of his age by the growth of our children. He kept quite well and normal until a month or two before he died, when we noticed he was getting thin and his spine was noticeable. • He was just eighteen when he passed <away. ** * * PETONE NAVALS. Dear Sir" Percy Flage,—As an ex--0.C., I am pleased to supply the information "Omadhaun" asks-for in your last night's column. There were three forts defending the inner harbour, manned by the Petone Navals. under R.N.Z.-A~ instructors:— , . Fort Kelburri (Ngahauranga).—Two 6in E.O.C. guns on H.P. mountings (disappearing), and very good-shooting guns they were. Fort Buckley (Kaiwarra).—Two 64----pounder guns. , Gardens Battery (Kelburn).—One 7in muzzle-loader. The gun emplacement at Fort Buckley and the district gunner's cottage can still be seen just below the bend in the road above the oil tanks and directly above the tunnel. The Gar* dens Battery site is. now occupied by the Observatory, and the old P.N.A.V. barracks is the Kelburn Scout House. —Yours sincerely, E. V. BEVAN. O.C.A. (Brooklyn) also supplied the information sought by "Omadhaun." Our thanks, and "Omadhaun's." • # ♦ RESURGENCE. Wordsworth! 'Thou should'st be living at this hour: England would show to thee she is no fen Of stagnant waters. Altar, sword, and pen, , Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, Have now regained their ancient ' English dower . ■ ' Of inward happiness. Gone—her selfish men. She is raised up,—she is herself again,— Endowed with manners, virtue, freedom, power. Thy prayer to Milton stirs the patriot heart. Thy trumpet-blast for human liberty Reverberates through every land and sea. Now England holds the tyrant foe at bay; - In freedom's fight she plays the noblest part; ; Her finest hour she lives—in this— our day! CROWBAB. # .. #. * ■ ONE FOR RIPLEY. A.Y.H. sends this in: In that piquant Chicago periodical "The Blade," the Wellington correspondent, under the heading "Terrifying War Horror," writes: We have a new mystery war tank down here. It has been christened > "Semple's Pie Cart" as a compliment to the Hon. Bob Semple, who sponsored its construction. , The tank . carries three guns of a new type for shrapnel, which spreads in a horizon|tal, three-dimensional, wide blanket of steel slugs with cataclysmic effect on an opposing force. This is as. nothing to a secret apparatus in the tank which projects a needle-like rod of flame of the oxy-acetone type, with a range of 2000 yards and an exceedingly low trajectory. In a private , trial, at a range of a mile, it slashed an old railway locomotive ! to ribbons in a few seconds. By inadvertence a vagrant cow received the fire jet at her rear ■ end, and in "a split second all that remained of her was an acrid odour of incinerated casein and glue. Yet another innovation in the tank is a sten-torian-voiced loudspeaker with a range of six miles, which, per medium of special records, hurls good, gory (borrowed) Australian invective at the enemy; for example: "Surrender, you ruddy cows, or we'll fling the whole bleeding foundry at you!" The tank was trudging along the coast road in the Manawatu district when the crewdecided to try out the loudspeaker on a Maori village at a range of about three miles , inland. Unfortunately* the speed governor of the gramophone mechanism slipped a .cog and the record went through at 60 miles an hour. The Maoris heard a thundering tornado of roars, shrieks, and screams coming in, as it were, from the sea, and in two jiffies every man, woman, child, and dog was racing for the tall timber. It took a week for a posse of police and a hundred settlers to find the Maoris, and another week to coax them back to their homes.