New Year’s Work Under Way

Northern Advocate, 4 January 1939, Page 6

New Year’s Work Under Way

Steeped In holiday sunshine. Whangarei lazily commenced another year’s work to-day. Some people, such as hotel staffs, railway and road transport workers and tea-shop attendants, never have holidays.

Others, like newspaper staffs and similar servants of the public, have only limited relief from the daily grind. People in the two latter categories kept the pot boiling yesterday, but others were enjoying the additional holiday officially described as “the day after New Year’s Day.”

To-day practically everybody returned regretfully to work, although the staffs of one or two offices are enjoying an extended vacation. Shopkeepers have been replenishing shelves and repairing the ravages of New Year’s Eve shopping, and officeworkers, blowing the dust off ledgers and papers, are making resolutions to keep their desks tidier in 1935. Local body staffs and Government Departments, from the point of view of numbers, staged some of the biggest attacks on the new year’s work, but their efforts lacked spirit. Stiffly they entered the old familiar quarters, brushing sand from their hair and tenderly massaging sunburned patches of epidermis. Lethargically they attempted to make sense of the dregs of last year’s duties and to make a start with the new, but brains dulled by long days on the highways, in the sun and surf and on ; the beaches, do not take kindly to hard work once more.

Even the housewives sallying down the streets in summer frocks and equipped with shopping bags to replenish the household stores wore an indifferent, weary look. Perhaps it was because the average seaside or camping holiday is not much of a spell for mother, anyway. Nobody’s heart was in his work to-day. Holiday-makers in sun suits and shorts still dotted the streets, and made it hard to believe that the 1939 year of toil was actually under way. “It is too good a day to be indoors,” was the general comment.