“Merilyn” says ...

Northern Advocate, 15 July 1939, Page 3

“Merilyn” says ...

jpRINCESS Elizabeth and Princess

Margaret now have weekly swimming lessons in their private pool in the gardens of Buckingham Palace. The green-tiled pool, which is about 40 feet long, has just been opened for use. Thermostatic devices keep the water, which is heated by electricity, at an even temperature, and there is an up-to-date system for cleaning, purifying and changing the water. The two little girls love their openair dips, as hitherto they have always had their lessons under cover. Princess Elizabeth is already a good swimmer and has won her life-saving badge for the Girl Guides. Princess Margaret promises to be equally good in time.

Evening dresses with short black sleeves that concentrate all detail in the neckline, are the latest from Paris. Corsages are trimmed high with red poppies, the stalks of which stick through the sleeves, look well with this style.

Queen Mary sent a silver cigarette case, with a lighter, as a wedding gift of Prince Vsevolode, of Russia, and Lady Mary Lygon, whose marriage took place at the Russian Church in London recently.

The Duke and Duchess of Kent’s present was a silver casserole, while Prim cess Helene of Russia gave the bride a magnificent bracelet of pearls-dia-mond and sapphires on white gold—a double bracelet of diamonds, a bracelet set with aquamarines, rubies

and rose diamonds, two amethyst and

gold clips with a gold bracelet band, diamond earrings, sapphire and diamond earrings, and a solitaire diamond ring.

A story has been going the social rounds in Sydney lately, concerning an inventive New Zealand farmer and his sheep-dipping apparatus. The farmer, knowing the traditional reluctance of sheep to enter the dip, constructed a perforated steel platform, which he fitted over the dipping trough. The principle was to shoo the sheep on to the platform, then pull a lever which lowered the platform and plunged the sheep into the grey-brown depths. He collected about a dozen of his neighbours one afternoon to inspect the machine and give him their opinions. They all wandered across the paddock to the dip, an interested member of the party being the farmer’s six-year-old son. As a preliminary, all the inspection party walked on to the platform to examine its construction. Need I tell you? The six-year-old son pulled the lever.

For the next week the boy’s mother used- to smuggle food to him at his various hideouts round the property. The Lord Mayor of London, Sir Frank Bowater, won a free permanent wave as well as three other prizes at a festival dinner in aid of the Children’s Aid Society, at which he presided recently. He kept an electric toaster, but auctioned the other articles.