A HUSBAND ON SPRING CLEANING

Northern Advocate, 24 October 1936, Page 8

A HUSBAND ON SPRING CLEANING

The Inside Story

fjpHE official opening of the spring cleaning season has taken place in North, and husbands returning from work find themselves in strange houses, their favourite chairs having Been moved to an unfamiliar position, the sofa shifted to the place which it occupied three years ago, and all their documents arranged in a distressingly neat pile. If women cannot share the thrill of regularly shifting their place of abode, they can at least effect internal transformations. The disease is not to be diagnosed as kleptomania, but it is akin to this depressing malady, in that it seems impossible for

By the Private D.

the female • to - withhold the urge for shifting things from place to place. The first symptoms appear in earliest childhood,-when even dolls’ domiciles are regularly renovated and rooms replanned.

« * m w ■yyHEN the daughter of the house attains the distinction of having a room of her own this trait becomes more fully developed. At, not less than six monthly intervals she plays draughts with the furniture, using the various pieces as pawns in the game, and it never concerns her in the least if she lays traps into which shq herself falls. What is a barked shin compared with the delighted pleasure of a new scene, and hn extra ray of sunlight manoeuvered direct from the side window as the culmination of the new arrangement of the bed?

marriage the disease becomes endemic, and with a whole household of furniture with which to toy, my lady’s hands and wits are always kept busy. Every woman cannot be an architect or a designer, but all have unfilled cravings in this direction, and how better can these be given free play than at the expense of hubby and the rest of the family? Comfort of course, must always be a secondary consideration to taste in these affairs, and a long suffering family, no matter how they become incommoded, commend the new lay out at pain of pained looks and scampered meals.

of you, no doubt, have sensed ab some time or other the influence for good which homely films may have Upon the domestic life. \lt is a fact that all moving pictures do not encourage divorce —and the deception of trusting husbands, but often expose the little problems of every day life in a realistic and helpful manner. You sit in your seat silently praying that your lifetime partner will profit by the lessons of the entertainment, but the feminine mind is a most intricate thing, and invariably a woman will twist a moral to her own point of view.

LITTLE while back I fondly hoped that my wife was completely cured of the moving mania. One of those bright little American domestic comedies, I imagined, had done 'the trick. It was entitled “The Furniture Movers,” and exposed in a most hilarious way,’ the housewife’s racket. The heroine came to a very bad end because of her penchant for shifting that which was best left alone. My wife tittered and laughed right

through the film. Apparently the moral had been sheeted home, but when I returned from work the next day she greeted me with that mysterious look in her eye, which either betokens an imminent bill for a new coat or another chipped sideboard or two. She led me to the sitting room; “Look,” she said. I looked, and subsided like a pricked balloon into the place where my favourite chair used to be—but wasn’t.

JpERHAPS moving furniture has its good points, because all this continual shuffling about might facilitate the discovery of a fortune left in an old resting place, in the same manner as an apparently disfavoured son discovered his grandmother’s fortune in her rocking chair.

• * • • * at Whangarei last week, * Colonel S. J. E. Closey remarked that the usual way to buy a motor car was to pay £ 10- down, £lO at the end of the first month and the rest through the Court. He was, of course, referring to the old days round the corner (what a corner that was?) when everyone lived on “tick.” However, even in those days the good salesman made his living quite easily. Selling is an art which knows •no limits created by depressions. On the other hand it has been said that many a sale has been killed by the jaw bone of an ass. A salesman must be cap-\ able of creating a demand; it would be difficult, for instance, to create a demand for fly papers in winter or bathing suits in Antarctica; but the efficient salesman will do It, provided he doesn’t let his jawbone wag like an! ass. He will find out what you want and supply it. Not like the'lady who; was crossing the Tasman with her husband and remarked; “Look at that ship over there.” “Never mind;the ship,” he moaned, “tell me when you see a tram.” V A !

* * * ♦ WHANGAREI motor cycle dealer recently received the following epistle from a prospective dative customer. Like the patent medicine advertisers, we guarantee that the original is on our file: “Just a short note to you.” wrote Hori, “to ask .you if you mind sending a catalogue of motor cycles. I’ll be very please if you could send it by the return mail, Monday, the third. ' That’s all I’m writing for. Please send me the prices of them' and terms and deposite of it kind of cycle, “type” gallons to the hour mileage to the gallon. I’ll be your exporter if possible.” Hori, who lives in a wayback kianga, apparently is a man of business instincts, and has eyes on a possible overseas trade.

QN almost any day there is to be seen parked outside a Whangarei shop a motor car of incredible decreptitude. The owner of the premises recently complained bitterly to the possessor of the explosion on wheels. “It’s bad for trade to have it left in front of my business,” he said, but the driver is a man who has an undying love for his quaint conveyance. “Get away with you,” he retorted. “My old car is one of the best in Whangarei. It is a Rolls-Kinardly.” “A Rolls-Kinard-ly?” repeated his friend with a note of incredulity in his voice. “Yes. It rolls down the hills, and kinardly go up them again.”