POSTSCRIPTS

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 58, 6 September 1945, Page 6

POSTSCRIPTS

Chronicle and Comment

BY PERCY FLAGE / x

' Said Laval: "I shall never desert my post, whatever happens." But suppose you were suspended from it at the end of a rope? . * * * Giraffes are valuable. When Chief Batho sent one as a present to Queen Victoria in 1897 it was valued at £1000. * * * i "Water!" he gasped. "Water!" It was brought, and he proceeded to bianco his belt. * * * LISTEN. A pilot who had baled out in North Africa was coming down when he was amazed to see another man with his parachute going up. "Hi, there!" he shouted. "What's happening to you?" *It's all right, old man," came the reply. "Mine's a tent. It's windy down below!" * # # INTIMATION. Dear Flage,—Having returned to Wellington after a considerable absence I should very much like to know what has become of Mamie and her "Morning Tea Monologues"; also what has become of "Crowbar," who wrote an entrancingly lovely bit about H.M. the Queen placing a flower in the hand of a Canadian soldier suffering from wounds received in World War I.— Yours, sincerely, The dear old lady has hidden herself, where we do not know, but "Crowbar" is still at the front of bright verses. * * . * NEW BARON. Mr. Geoffrey Walter Harboard, aged 84, a former clerk who earned £6 a week and has become the ninth Lord Suffield through the death of the eighth Baron, had some outspoken comments to make.when he was told that the residents of Suffield (England) had not made preparations to receive him. "I don't care a -— whether I live there or not," he said, angrily. "The place is mortgaged to the hilt, and I don't suppose I have much coming to me—not enough to keep them, too. "I am not surprised at coming into the title," the new peer added. "I expected it if I outlived the seventh and eighth barons; and that was not much of a job, as they both drank like fish." The new baron lives in an adopted daughter's horne —a semi-detached villa in Hounslow. * • # * THE AWAKENING. Now deep is the silence That broods over all. A delicate leaf One can almost hear fall, And the stir of a bird As she tucks in her wing— But, oh, what is this Inharmonious thing? Abroad, on a frolic, Rides Youth, girls and boys Lustily yell and make a great noisflfc With bleating of sirens They vie in the race, A roar and they recklessly t Sweep by the place. Sweet dreaming is ended, One hastens on, sad . For an eventide robbed Of the magic it had. F.E.M.—S. Lower Hutt. * ■«- # • ' LEAVING ENGLAND. "Disgusted with England" because an empty .five-roomed cottage, in the grounds of his New Maiden home, has been requisitioned by the local council for a homeless soldier and his family, Frederick Lanfranconi, a wealthy Swiss precision toolmaker, is returning to Switzerland. "When I came to England in 1936 I never thought my wife and family would see the sort of rule we have experienced on my own property," he said. "I am a man from a wealthy Swiss family, and my wife comes from one of the wealthiest and best-known families in France. "England will lose my brains and skill as a technical engineer. She is also losing export trade to the tune of £120,000 a year. I shall take my business from this country, and the country I go to will benefit." . The Mayor of Maiden has received scores of congratulatory letters from, all parts of the country on his council's action.