CUSTOMS THAT SHOCK

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22909, 11 December 1937, Page 17 (Supplement)

CUSTOMS THAT SHOCK

By CAPTAIN J. R. J. MACNAMARA,

IT is the common practice for the people of*every nation to consider themselves the only clean people in the world,- and to class all others by dirt in varying degrees. I met an English family who had recently returned from a Scots sheeprearing district. They had been staying on a farm. "How did you enjoy it V 1 asked. "Very much," they replied, "except that it was so dirty. They even had their sheep in the kitchen." Undaunted, I later went myself to the same farm. It was true, they did have the sheep in the kitchen, for it was the lambing season, and they did not wafit the sick lambs to die, but preferred to nurse them round in the warmth French Opinion My hosts had only one complaint to make about their previous visitors. "They were so dirty," they said. "They used to leave everything about, particularly their smoking things, and what is more, they would bring their filthv dog into the house, even into their bedrooms!" The farm dogs were, of course, kept outside. How often does one hear the French decried as a dirty race? One is told that they are too economical to beat their carpets for fear they wear out, that nothing will induce them to open their windows, and that they ev.en

M.P. — (Copyright)

Illustrated by Minhinnick

sink so low as to eat frogs and snails. The French, on the other hand, consider us unhealthily lazy over our cooking, content as we are to exist on everything merely boiled in water and with* the cracks filled up with an overdose of suet, while they point in holy horror at our publiehouscs. To a Frenchman who sits with his whole family, from his grandmother to his infant daughter, in a cafe, each perfectly naturally drinking what he or she desires, from brandy to milk, the thought of our public houses is a positive nightmare—small, poky dens, where man. with a feeling of sin, pours down his throat as much of the forbidden liquid as he can in the time allowed him by the authorities, a liquid which, incidentally, the barmaids invariably spill on the counter so that the whole place reeks. The lloor of a public house is, perhaps, the chief cause of disgust to the French family man—sawdust where man may cast everything for which he has no further use.

Over 110 household subjects do nations disagree so much as beds. In

What One Thinks of Another

England, for instance, man uses .1s many blankets as he thinks fit, often easting one off in tlic night; his bed is turned down in the morning before being made, the mattress is turned over, and man goes to sleep again to live in a comfortable and clean home, To the German, however, it would bo considered most unclean for the blankets in any way to touch tb«■ sleeper. The blankets which are to be used are made up into a kind of bolster sewn into a sheet, and one is supposed to balance the whole on to]) of one during the night. Thus the blankets do not. get soiled and the outside sheet can be washed. Italian Beds The Italians look upon both English and German beds as unhygienic. "How can any bed be fit to sleep in," they say, "unless it lias first been aired out of the window?" So, in every Italian town, if one looks up at the windows in the mornings, one will see all the bedding of the household, mattresses, blankets, sheets and all, hanging over the win-dow-sills. Furthermore, there is an industry which flourishes in Italy and nowhere else. Women go round at short intervals from house to house and take every mattress to pieces, clean the inside, pick it over, and put it together again. "To live in squalor like a native," is a common expression. The English in India think the natives are dirty. The natives, likewise, think the English are dirty. To the English, the Indians smell strongly of the fats they uso in cooking. To the Indians, the English reek so strongly of beef (which also upsets their religious susceptibilities) that it is kinder to allow an Indian battalion to march in front of a British battalion than vice versa. 'J'ho people uho are quite certain that we all—Europeans, Asiatics, Africans and the like—are so dirty that we shall eventually die of it, are the Americans, 1 must say that 1 get a bit bored with their super-hygiene. The other day I was solemnly told off bv an American woman for washing my hair in water. Surely, I knew it was not healthy to wash one's hair in water, nnd that the only possible stuff for washing one's hair was eggs. I/'t mo continue to wallow in my European dirt is nil 1 can answereven if i must BOiiio day die of it.—