LOCAL GOSSIP.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19892, 10 March 1928, Page 1 (Supplement)

LOCAL GOSSIP.

Bl MERCUHO.

The city's embarrassment with regard jj 0 wa ter supplies, now temporarily ended, has given rise to a new colloquialism. People got into the habit of referring to * passiLg shower as "only an Allum teaser." Fortunately things did not come to such a pass as to disturb the Mayor Vho is on record as saying "there is st ill enough water to put with 'it*." After this week's deluge there should be ■enough water to drown 'if and the Rem«Ura tennis lawns and other thirsty subjects. Moreover people need no longer blush or prevaricate when- neighbours slyly admire the greenness of their lawns. Instead the voice of the mower will be heard once more in the suburbs, vegetables will spring anew and the snails ' prosper exceedingly.

The weather conspired with Mr. Sidey |o emphasise the end of summer time. The days were shortened with a vengeance, far more thai. could be explained by putting the clock back an hour. It Jiad been a real summer time, the first for years, as if King Sol were rewarding those who desired to see more of him. V jh e light of his countenance shone in juddy reflection from every cheek—and irom many suffering backs and ruby loses. Then, as if there had been too much of a good thing, the clocks were put back and summer time ended. It v,as a surly trick and no wonder that King Sol withdrew himself behind dark clouds and rang down the curtain on long play hours with raindrop tears. A ■dramatic enditg, indeed, but one which no doubt confirmed the dairy farmers in thsir "hate" of that Sidey time which dried up their pastures and dried off their cows. They have already condemned the innovation and if the question is put to a general referendum they will certainly have the support of courting couples who are natural haters of long twilights. If there is any doubt, ask returned soldiers about the drawbacks of » Scottish summer, even without daylight saving.

The Herald has suggested the taking cf a referendum on the subject of daylight saving on the general election day. An ■even more attractive idea is to endeavour ±o induce Mr. Sidey to forsake his comfortable city seat in Dunedin and stand ior one of the cow-spanking seats in, say, Taranaki or. the Waikato. The United Kew Zealand Political Organisation—one has to stop writing to look up the full name of Mr. Forbes' new bantling—might, cr might not, be willing to give Mr. Sidey its blessing, but perhaps he would be willing to do without it. Whether he see daylight at the snd of such a contest is another matter; it might end in one loug dark night, politically speaking. But there is no doubt that such a campaign would add to the gaiety of the elections.

"Goats as Pioneers" —it made a good heading in the press a few days ago. Tiie item'was by way of defence of the humble animal who has lately butted his way into prominence on the other side of the Tasman Sea where goat-racing bids iair to start a new controversy even more hectic than that which has been raging round tin hares. The champion of the goat told how important a part Billy had played in Queensland, in the development of the country "out back," how he had helped to establish little homes, and in various ways had helped to make the wilderness "blossom as the rose." The goats carted the water from the wells, brought in the firewood, and when Oolamoola held its annual Bi\nd of Hope picnic, the boys followed the time-hon-oured procedure of a most ancient and honourable Order, and "rode the goat."

All things considered the goat has not been given his just deserts as a pioneer. Even in prosperous Auckland, many early colonists will remember how the humble goat provided the family with milk in days when dairies and milkmen were unknown. And to this day, the goat is Tendering valuable service to many country settlers by eating down the devastating blackberry. On a country sideroad, some twenty miles from Auckland, two goats have been employed for years past in this tedious yet useful occupation. They belong to a farmer who, no doubt, finds it easier to keep a couple of animals tethered constantly to his-strip of roadside herbagde than to tackle it with a billhook. But what a fate for the poor goats—doomed to spend their lives tethered to a stake, on a constant diet of noxious weeds! Which calls to mind the pithy remark of a well-known member of the Auckland Education Board during a discussion as to what should be done with a certain school paddock that had become overgrown with blackberry. " We'll have to do something," observed the chairman. "Couldn't Ave put it into paspalum J" The farmer member woke np and yawned. "Put it into goats!" he #aid, and they did.

The motor vehicle regulations just gazetted have been considerably toned down, particularly in respect to devices for giving "audible warning of approach." The original draft regulations uncompromisingly demanded a "deep-toned" horn or hooter. Had this requirement survived we would have had standardised noise—%a "toot" ensemble. Even in their amended form the regulations do not allow the motor liorn to run the full gamut of the register. It 13 stipulated that warning devices shall not produce a "shrieking, raucous or offensive noise." This will be the end of requests to the accessory deaier for something to make the pedestrian jump. It will bo a new experience for some of our dashing drivers to toot melodiously and go soothingly by.

A visitor who has been touring the Auckland suburbs asks why the post office of patrician and plutocratic Remuera has stood for fourteen years with a clocktower but no clock, while more or less proletarian Ponsonbv has a post office with a much higher tower and a clock in iall working order. But after all, Remuera has a good precedent in Wellington, whose town hall tower went clockless much longer before a worthy and wealthy citizen came to the rescue.

A Christehurch city councillor suggests that the German guns in the Cathedral City be sent up to the Auckland Museum as relics of a barbarous -age. This seems to be another oblique thrust at perfidious Auckland. If the good man, in a true scientific spirit, really wants to see the weapons preserved for posterity, does he not have them put into the museum of his own town ? If memory serves, that institution has many trophies of a cruide and murky past, from fossil pterodactyls and bronze-age daggers down to highwaymen's pistols, shark's-tooth spears, stuffed tigers and German ma-chine-guns. Logically, the only other course would be to weed out all these nasty things and send them up to Auckland holus bolus. Auckland would certainly not decline the gift, even if a few field-guns and howitzers were tacked 011 to it; but then, what can any good socialist of the Christehurch brand expect of a city which not only raises £250,000-odd for a war memorial and then proceeds to build a war museum with the money ?