POSTSCRIPTS

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 150, 22 December 1945, Page 6

POSTSCRIPTS

BY PERCY FLAGE

Chronicle and Comment

The cheeriest possible Christmas to you all, many and happy friends, who year on year have followed Column 8. Good luck.

British soldiers say that as soon as German girls get their soap-ration they make a clean get away, * * *

Give us, oh give us the man who sings at his work! He will dp more in the same time —he will do it better — he will persevere longer.—Carlyle.

The longest length of the longest snake —the reticulate python—is thirtytwo or three feet, and its average length is twenty feet or less. The anaconda of South America at its longest length is twenty-eight feet.

The oceans contain 4,800,000 cubic miles of salt—enough to cover the United States a mile and a half deep. The earth has a reserve of aproximately 325,000 cubic miles, and the mineral is found in nearly every country. # * # MIDGETS. Brevity is the keynote of a bar opened on Chicago's south side by Parnell St. Aubin, aged 23, and standing 3ft 9in. . , . His bartender is two inches shorter, and midget waitresses scoot round on roller skates. On the walls are painted famous midgets. Only the customers are full-sized. * # * GOT IT! The sale of a large building in Wellington, writes "Constant Reader of Column 8," recalls that when this edifice was completed six months before the due date the contractor would not hand over the keys until he was paid an additional sum in lieu of rent to be saved by the owners by earlier possession—and he got it! Those were the days when contractors and tradesmen really did work! • # * INTIMATION. Dear Percy Flage,—To settle an argument in our factory could you please tell me the nationality of the singer John Charles Thomas. Some say he is a negro and others say Welsh and English. Would you please write the answer in 'the "Post" soon. —Yours faithfully, RON HOBMAN. He is an American. •» » * HUGE ESTATE. The Earl of Leicester, Lord of Holkam Hall, and a huge deer park, has his own particular servants problem. At the moment, the Earl is the butler* cook, footman, and gardener. "I used to have 40 servants, but you can't find them now," he said. "Anyway, the Countess and I don't mind the housework. We have no desire to return to the grand scale of living, but we are worried over the deterioration of our wonderful library of 20,000 books and art treasures, which should be preserved for posterity." Holkam Hall has more than 50 rooms. The Earl does the cooking on a small stove. The library includes first folios of Shakespeare's works. «- * * LIFTED IN NET. A British girl stowaway reached New York aboard the former German luxury liner Europa. The ship's officers profess ignorance of the affair, but 6000 American servicemen, while shielding the name of the girl and of the sweetheart she is supposed to have accompanied all seem to know the details of her escapade. According to the troops the girl was placed in a duffle bag and left with the baggage to be put in the Europa's hold at Southampton. Lifted on board in a loading net, she concealed herself in a locker until the ship was 400 miles at sea. Subsequently she was confined to the sick bay. The only mystery, the soldiers say, is that the ship's officers reported ignorance of the whole affair.

RUSSIAN GLAMOUR. Dazzling Russian girls have stolen the limelight from glamour boy Goering and his cronies who are in the dock in the Nuremberg Palace of Justice. All eyes are focused on the Soviet beauties, most attractive of whom is a girl soldier, Natasha, who sits just in front of the Press benches. She is very beautiful, but Pressmen have found that she knows only one word of English—"No." Natasha is a blonde, with big, babyblue eyes, shapely silk-stockinged legs, and a Medal for Valour hanging from her smock-like tunic. Another Russian girl, Olga, is not troubled by men. From her belt hangs a massive automatic pistol, and she is nicknamed "Pistol-packin' Momma." Russian men appear reluctant to part with their "portable armouries." All haye carried pistols for some time and when they discarded them, an orderly found rows of loaded tommy-guns in their sleeping quarters in an American mess. It has been explained to the Russians it is "not done" to take guns into the dining-room, and a special parking place has been arranged for them. # # * BALLADE OF CHRISTMAS. Here's peace at last—at least in name — A time to bid good-bye to woes, A time for glee and merry game, When folk may drink and toast with foes And pessimists became jocose. So fill the flagon; toss the tear; Be like a star; be like a rose. Old Christmas comes but once a year. To hell with strife and sneerful blame; Let joy abound while rancour goes, Let laughter shake your ribby frame | And gloom hide out where no one I knows. ! Let belles be kissed by blithesome 1 beaux. Unloose the cork from bottled cheer. And fill the air with glad "yo-ho's." Old Christmas comes but once a year. We moaned enough when winter came; . Some groaners said they nearly froze. They really had no sense of shame; But now they spring on lambkin toes. , With frolic shout while joy-]Uice flows. , . They prance about in highest gear With warmest heart that kindness shows. Old Christmas comes hut once a year. Envoi. „ We'll all be friends; it's no ' suppose ; We'll put a stop to jibe and Deer; We'll have the peace that good-will Old Christmas comes but once a year" LEO FANNING. #. * * AUSTRALIAN CUCKOO. In England, the cuckoo is one of the best known and most beloved of birds. It is a migrant, a summer visitor to Europe from warmer climes. Ihe cuckoo is regarded as the real harbinger of spring, and the first 'cuckoo call is eagerly listened for as an omen, proof that winter has really passed. The European cuckoo has probably been studied more intensively than almost any other bird, and much that is new and intensely interesting about its complicated life history and breeding habits has been revealed in recent in Australia, writes "Donald F. Thomson, D.Sc, although we have not one, but many species of cuckoo, none of them have received anything like the attention that has been devoted to the European cuckoo. It is Srobable that when the full details of leir life history is known, they will prove to be no less interesting. Like the English cuckoo, most of our Australian species are migrants, but none has the familiar "cuckoo" call of the European' bird. Best-known Australian cuckoos are the pallid, the fantailed, the bronze and narrow-billed bronze, the brush, and the blackeared, and to a lesser extent, in the north, the "channel bill" or "storm bird." . , The fact that many of the cuckoos are parasitic and. shirking parental responsibility, foist their eggs on other birds who are obliged to act as fosterparents, is'well-.known.