JUNK.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19833, 31 December 1927, Page 1 (Supplement)

JUNK.

CHRISTMAS—AND AFTER.

EI GRAHAM HAT*

It's all over! It has been a very jolly time; a very pleasant time; a time of goodwill and rejoicing, festival and good cheer. And now it's over. Thank goodness! When Providence invented Christmas, it is possible to argue that it did fairly well; but when it ordained that' Christmas should come but once a year, there is no doubt that it did very well indeed. As thing 3 are, I can look' forward to the next few months with pleasure and anticipation; but if Christmas came next June I'd turn heathen. During the winter our minds become so lulled by distance that Christmas conjures up pleasurable thought of holly and puddings, and baldheaded uncles and Charles Dickens. Looking back on last week, I can think of nothing but turmoil and indigestion and heavy afternoons and sticky sweetmeats. A week ago I was a hopeful, energetic man, with money in my purse, struggling along toward a steady competency. So peaceful, so inoffensive, so contented was I, that the thing which befel me seems almost pathetic in retrospect'. You've seen a quiet, self-respecting dog going methodically along the road about' his own business. Suddenly out of the blue, in a flurry of fur and flying legs, holocaust descends upon him in the shape of two allied mongrels, and they hurl themselves on him, knock him down, roll him in the dust, and that' peaceful street is turned in a twink into a mixture of snarling, biting, hurtling turmoil. Then duty done, they fall apart, and everyj thing goes on just as before. That's how I feel after my bout with Christmas good cheer. A Plague of Parcels. I was a peaceful citizen going about my business, happy in my tlireo rneals a day, my after-dinner pipe, and a gentle game on Saturday. That's all I asked, but apparently I asked too little. Iho first thing that struck me was t. plague of shopkeepers wanting to sell me things, silly things, useless things, dear things. Then came a plague of parcels, parcels here, parcels there, parcels everywhere. Parcels in paper, parcels out of paper, parcels which leapt out of my arms and sprang across the street, parcels that bulged my pockets. Bottles! When is a bottle not a bottle? Never! It's always a bottle. It defies all disguise, and climbs through all string. Then having battled and thought for a week, and been prey to procrastination, anxiety and brainfag, and provided myself with next to nothing, I suddenly went all to bits, and bought a lot of .things., silly things, useless things, things with which at no other time would I have even a flirting acquaintance. Armed with these in wasteful profusion, I went home, gritted my teeth and prepared to make merry. On the way home, people who in normal times would stop me and tell me a good story, give me a bad but excellently meant tip, or offer me a choice piece of gossip, guffaw at me and roar out " Merry Christmas," as though mere grin-power had anything to do with it. Koliing in the Bust. Christmas morning dawns, and through the buffoonery of Mr. Sidey and the wakefulness cf the world's small fry it seems to dawn much earlier than any other morning, and that's where the rolling in the dust really starts. It should be a comfort that I am not the only one who has bought silly things, useless things. But it isn t. It s only an aggravation. Because it soon appears that the things are not merely silly and useless, they are offensive. By what process of * thought, for instance,did Aunt Maggie think I would make merry with a spade ? That's an utterly useless thing. A dustman got my last spade, a charity bazaar the one before that, When youi think of the state of my backyard a spade is an insult. And handkerchiefs! Can anyone enthuse over handkerchiefs '! They only remind! one of the shortcomings of nature, which has bungled our fashioning, so that such clumsy and inaesthetic articles are necessary. But they are decidedly not things to make merry"over. It almost makes one weep to see so many. I'm really such an easy person to buy Christmas presents for. Golf balls, for instance. Did any of my friends give me golf-balls? No, not one. Yet any number of them must have seen me drive from the tee. They must realise any one with a slice like mine cannot have too many golf balls. Not dozens, but barrowloads, would be appropriate. No one appears to ( have thought of a motorcar, or a Stetson, or a couple of tickets for Rfose Marie—it's all spades and handkerchiefs, oh yes, and a tin of paint, by chance, no doubt, the colour my washhouse roof used to be. Looking Forward to Next Christmas. As the day wears on the house looks more and more like a church bazaar, filled with a lot of junk that would delight the heart of an Assyrian hawker, things that no one would dare to buy or sell except at this festive season. Yet in my heart I've got a sneaking liking for it all. Toward the end of this year I'll be quite looking forward to Christmas again. There's something a little out of the rut of every-day lift about it all that does us good. There's something wholesome in getting away from the stern, logical, carefully plam.ed habit of life, into a world of make-believe and folly. There't a grim kind of joy in owning, after a year of harmless, necessary belongings like umbrellas, and oatmeal, and tomato plants, and blacking, such unnecessary and gratuitous things as an orange tie, a box of gift cigars, a Mdtisso painting, or a canary. It's a beautiful feeling to know that you can go and buy a pretty bauble in the certain knowledge that neither your conscience nor your wife will remind you that the kitchen oilcloth needs renewing. Admittedly, it's an expensive way of acquiring -unnecessary things, but almost all possessions are unnecessary—these Christmas things are only a little more so. When Christmas is over there are just as many useless things in the world as before, only a different lot of people have got them. It's the world's greatredistribution of junk, and even junk is all the better , for b(*ing passed round. Besides, if A gets a lot of unnecessary stationery onto B, be very sure that B will unload some worthless scent onto A in return. C, who is a salaried man, in order to keep in the picture, is forced to buy some rubbish from both A and B and ho suffer; 3 from haying no way of recouping himself, but C is used to getting the worst of it; a» little more or less can do him little harm.

Yes, I'm coming round to it already, and I know by the time it comes round to me I'll be all ready to start grinning and shouting and shaking all over again. Besides, I've got one present chosen already. I feel that .Uncle John wants a nice new spade.. ft