FUNNY SIDE OF THINGS

Evening Star, Issue 23726, 6 November 1940, Page 5

FUNNY SIDE OF THINGS

- - —-.tt-i - ■ LIGHTER ASPECTS OF WAR Times are grim, but so long as we can see the funnjr, side of things they! don’t seem so bad, writes a London ■ journalist. This characteristic of tha. • British public is something to be proud* of, and it has been greatly in evidence in the air raid alarms of the past two or three weeks. After one night alarm, i heard groups of neighbours chuckling heartily, as each one related the adventures and mishaps of the preceding hours—tales* of lost slippers and lost nether garments, of black eyes and bumped head* and torn clothes. I even heard ona la"dy relate how she snatched up several pounds of peas on the way down to tha shelter, and persuaded her husband to shell them while she herself stole a brief nap! " One young married couple, with an Anderson shelter elaborately sunk ah the foot of the garden, arrived to find it already, crowded with neighbours, ineluding a newlydiorn baby and a mg Airedale dog. Without so much as a “ by your leave ” they had clambered over the garden gate and had taken possession, and there was no room for the lawful owners 1 , There was no time to argue, and.it was with very bad grace indeed that - the couple raced badk to the house t* take what cover they could. , , " It is a fact that, within half an hour of opening their doors following a night alarm one branch insurance office alone received nine requests for grants toward the purchase of new spectacles—the originals having been trodden upon. or. . sat on in the scurry for shelter. It i* a matter for conjecture what was the, total number of glasses broken in the town that night. . , Lots of people continue to wake on the last notes of the “all.clear” an® to seek shelter in the belief that it was a warning signal they heard. Some o|. these people, in fact, have remained cooped up m cramped quarters tor hours, in needless concern. But .one married couple who wok© on the alt clear ” signal were under no such' apprehension. Just as a matter of pr®“ caution, however, they peeped mto th* bedroom of their small son, aged eight. Great was the consternation to find tha they raced, to find ■ tha missing son calmly reading a corn!a paper in the refuge_ room. He had. heard the warning signal in the nrs* place, but had decided not to wake hi» parents until the necessity arose. As this was the; very! decision tha parents had privately agreed to adopt with the boy, it must be confessed they felt rather foolish! . . Quite a number of housewives hava been quick to realise that -an- Anderson shelter, deeply sunk in.■ the ground, makes .an excellent cool chamber for storing butter, milk, and .meat. There is nothing to be said-against the practice so long as it does not occupy vital space, but it is just as well to warn the family in-advance. . Quite a stormy scene arose in on* household-when the wife discovered that her husband, had been sitting nn the. family’s weekly ration of butter top over an hour. As the husband was big and burly, the butter had long ceased to exist. But the flannel trousers of the victim were completely beyond th* powers of the local dry cleaners.-