Oddments

Greymouth Evening Star, 18 October 1948, Page 4

Oddments

A 78-year-old retired professor of mathematics was puzzled by the attention he attracted during an evening stroll through the public gardens at Frankfurt, until he discovered his gift tie from the United States bore in phosphorescent paint the words, “I’m looking for love.”—London, October 17. * S: * * # The post-war button shortage in Britain has hit church collection plates. The Rev. W. A. Gibson, Vicar of Limbledon, noting an absence of buttons after the weekly collections, has concluded it is “not due to the realisation that it is sinful to pretend, but to the fact buttons are costlier than pennies noAvadays.”

-je jj. Warning to punters.—For “A Little Treasury of Modern Poetry” (Routledge) I was grateful. It is edited by Mr Oscar Williams, an American poet, and includes a large number of light verse. Several among the best are by “Anon,” for instance that couplet of “The Horse”: I know two things about the horse, And one of them is rather coarse. —Desmond MacCarthy, Sunday Times. Directed labour —There is food for thought in the following for Launceston: An eight-room house built in Maitland Street by convicts between 1818 and 1824 contains enough bricks to build three or four modern houses. The first floor is being converted into a flat. Workmen found brick walls 13in thick, with many of the bricks bearing thumb prints of the convicts who made them. The doublestorey house stands on a foundation of large pieces of stone cemented together to make a thickness of 23in and is sunk more than 4ft in to the ground. It was bought by the present owner for £B5O about five years ago. «im ■—Tfec SggJ&ct