“TOPSY-TURVY” LONDON

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 January 1941, Page 2

“TOPSY-TURVY” LONDON

“BOMBORES” AND “MAKE-UP” London has turned upside down. The East End has gone West and the West End has gone East. Vast gilt ballrooms, lit by priceless crystal chandeliers—tied up, for safety, in wire netting—house an entire street of bombed-out families, writes Betty Wilson, from London, in the “Sydney Morning Herald.” They change places with the daughters of the house, who, if it were not for the war, would be going to nightly parties in gilt ballrooms, almost identical with our own. Instead, they are working in the East End. There is a new vocabulary. People chatter about “blitz babies” and “bombores.” A blitz baby, as you might imagine, is kin to the one whom Lesley Blanch quotes in “Vogue.” “Mummie, don’t sing lullabies. I can’t hear the sirens,” said this tough child.

A “bombore” takes in everybody—you, me, and the woman next door. It describes the woman who delights in making whistling noises in the bus.-“It came down like this—Whee-e-e-e-e-,” she says. The whole routine of living has been turned upside down with this topsy-turvy London. We have discovered that “shop early” is an entirely reasonable slogan. Many local shops, especially those in districts which have been badly hit, are prone to put up the shutters when the sirens go. It may take an entire morning to collect the ingredients for a mild luncheon.

The larger shops, serene in the consciousness of adequate basement shelters, carry on until the roof spotters sound a hooter to indicate that the raiders are directly overhead. Once the hooter has gone, fittings are finished off downstairs. Madame comes down with her hair in curlers, and gets on with her permanent wave under 10 or 20 feet of concrete. Her new hair-do is finished by the time the All Clear sounds. THE CINEMAS The evening cinemas, which, when they began to make a habit of closing down at 9 p.m., seemed spitefully careful, now seem too dissipated for words. Unless you are living in Piccadilly or Park Lane, it is quite hopeless to think that you can stay until the end of the West End nine o’clock session. It is not the German bombs that will disturb you, but our own gun barrage when it comes to getting home. People who live anywhere near a reasonable local cinema try to get to an early session so that they can be home before the blitzkrieg starts. If they cannot, they sit through escapist American films, punctuated by booms, crumps, and whee-ees and then make a dash for a lateish dinner at the nearest pub. Home life becomes more knitted together than ever, in defiance of a blitz that is trying to break it up. People are busy now rearranging sit-ting-rooms for the winter. “Cosy” is becoming the most useful word in the decorator’s vocabulary. Sofas, lots of cushions, and easy chairs round, the hearth seem unbelievably luxurious when the sirens might wail again at any minute, and it’s hey for the basement and the truckle bed below.

Beauty specialists report a definite increase in the sale of creams and lotions. West End basements smell of expensive unguents, while women put in yeoman work on double chins. We got past the stage of sleeping in careful make-up a week or so ago. They have decided to dig in and to keep their lives as normal as possible.