THE END OF THE HOLIDAYS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21698, 13 January 1934, Page 6 (Supplement)

THE END OF THE HOLIDAYS

BY CHRISTINK COMBER

BACK TO THE CITY

HUMAN PERVERSITY

I love the beginning and end of things far more than their actual reality—the beginning of a storm, with the clouds rolling over the horizon and massing in platoons to right and left, and then advancing all together till the whole of the sky is obscured; and the half-sunny, half-cloudy chess-board of blue and grey-white sky on the last morniug of the storm. But for the grey rainy that come between I have only* loathing. And 111 a manner, these are' almost exactly my reactions to the holidays. I begin packing in a rapture of anticipation. What to take and what to risk leaving behind? What frocks to go with Which hats? Which shoes to go with everything ? What sunburn lotion and what shampoo? I enjoy myself thoroughly with maps and scales of fares and as much illustrated literature as comes to hand. I live the holiday over, arid over, and dream dreams about it till, when it actually comes and nothing goes quite according to plan, I experience /a sensation of flatness, as if I had been cheated out of something, quite forgetting, of course, that cold reality and the stuff that dreams are -"made of 'are very, very rarely recognisable relatives. But the real core of the trouble is that, after the first couple of days of quiet/and space and fresh air and bird song, 1/ begin to be city-sick. I long to drop into Queen Street to see what the drapery have done to their windows and what kind of beach shoes are on show I read of a film I would like to see and reflect morosely that it will be "off " next week; I have read all my library books. WTien Anally I tear my last pair of silk stockings on a trailing piece of blackberry and set about investigating/what is to be had in the local emporiums, then does black rage enter my heart,. and I begin to wonder why I looked forward to this holiday with such rapturous expectancy. -Toward the end of my country stay, however, there begins to reawaken within me that same ecstatic anticipation. But this time it is inspired by the thought of going back to the city, back to its crowds and its lights and its laughter and its life. Yes, back to its definite hours of work. I think of Queen /Street at five o'clock, Karangahape Road on Saturday morning, the harbour in the evening, with its green and red and yellow lights and perhaps a moon shining. I think with affectionate gratitude of the particular little corners in the city that I love especially and "have marked out for the most frequent strolls. And who can say there is no romance, no thrills of excitement and adventure in waking in the night to hear the trains rumble on, on, into the darkness ? Here I miss the ferries and the wharves and the overseas liners. Even the silence, devoid alike of the distant blast of a siren and the low ocean-roar that is the city's voice, is alien to me, and I yearn—and how intensely!—for just one short half-hour of Auckland's shops//and streets. When the time approaches for me to go home again, how eagerly, how carelessly, I sling my clothes into my cases! With what fervour I struggle with calculations! In just three hours fortytwo minutes, I say to myself, I should h 9 in Auckland, if the train runs exactly to schedule and I can get a taxi straight away. - Now that I really am home again, I have already begun, by a kind of perverse assimilation, to appreciate in retrospect those glorious, straight-limbed kauris and to enjoy to the full the wet-mould smell of the bush and the peace of a silence broken only by the call of birds and the falling of leaves /and twigs, and scrambling of birds through dry undergrowth. Yet not even now, but rather in the months to come, months of work and maybe of weariness, shall I enjoy to the full my nervesoothing holiday among the native bush. Instead, I am at present too taken up with the pleasure of unpacking my holiday apparel and of making plans to spend , the last few days of my holiday shopping, and if the money will not stretch,, of merely looking. And I simply must visit the wharves and the library and the little out-of-the-way streets to see if they have changed in my absence.

Thus, by taking short holidays from time to time away from the city I never grow weary of it. When I hear people on returning from, their holiday revile the heartlessness of the city,. I think sadlv that they do not understand its voice. To me its accents hold every phase /of human feeling, from the most ecstatic elation to the blackest despair. And what, after all, has any other place to offer?