ENCUMBRANCES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22824, 7 March 1936, Page 5

ENCUMBRANCES

THEIR TIME AND PLACE

By Andrew Southland.

There is no more damning proof of time and money squandered and misspent than is afforded by an occasional inventory of our personal possessions—our household effects—conducted in a critical and impartial spirit. If, as Scripture avers, "To every thing there is a season," then here, in the variety of our belongings, lies all the evidence of a full and fruitful existence, unless, alas! it were not equally true that the season is frequently so brief and fraught with untimely occasions that disillusion follows our over-wrought anticipations. This typewriter is a case in point. But here, like the astute politician, or the seasoned newspaper controversialist, who hopes to impress his audience with his sense of chivalry and fairplay, a preliminary tap on the back is due to iny word-spinning opponent if only (like the gentlemen above quoted) that he may fall the harder in a final exposure of his demerits. The typewriter is a noble instrument. It clarifies turgid thought, gives form and perspective to otherwise inchoate paragraphs, shortens labour, and so lengthens life, if we are to believe certain advisers. It renders clear the obscurities of crabbed handwriting, and above all, it is an effective vehicle of impersonal courtesy. "A typewriter should be used if only in courtesy to editors." Thus an early mentor; it may have been Arnold Bennett; it certainly was not Stevenson. In this respect it seemed to me that a typewriter was an ambassador of thankless supererogation, since in my callow manuscript stage I had suffered nothing but discourtesy, discouragement, and at times cruel persiflage from dispeptic editors and their underlings. The not unfamiliar opening, for instance, "The sun sank slowly in the west," was countered in "Our Mailbag " with " Obviously your best time is when it is rising swiftly in the east. Try again." O the cruelty of that cheap and mordant sarcasm! But again my crumbs went forth upon the waters, this time in double-spaced typescript, as per "Advice to Authors," yes, authors! with a capital "A," and 10, the miracle befell. Thenceforth I became a diligent typewriter. The fact that less susceptible editors were impervious to type and courtesy alike never occurred to me till that arch-demon of cold print, "The editor regrets . . ." began to alternate once more with those early acceptances. The sturdy little Junior, however, won through, and presently from the office in the far-off city I was being bombarded with kilogrammes of scribbling newsprint through the post. This was the editorial way of encouraging an indolent contributor, and incidentally of earning the hearty ill-will of -the little mounted "postie" who delivered my mail.

PHOTOCxRAPHIC IMPEDIMENTA. It iB surprising how easily one capitulates to the superfluities acquired in unguarded moments of illusory anticipation. I began with a post-card camera, which, if the specifications were credible, could do everything that Michael Angelo and Titian failed to achieve, with a written record of each transcendental event. There are now five cameras in the bathroom cupboard, from the cheapest pasteboard boxform to a lordly reflex. Yes; in the bathroom cupboard or towel-press, as you will; nor do they deserve a better fate till plates and film* become once more the ordinary and attainable commodities of trade. In the meantime the Bpirits of Niepce and Zeiss may do their uttermost in the towelpress to exorcize the malignant influence of water, h. and c, as the house agenta have it There is no califont, however, and thus far the lenses \a,ve not perished. The camera? —a snare and a delusion! Definer of snow-white bathroom fitments, with jyro and amidol stains, and traces of insidious hypo lurking in every reachable towel. How many homes have been sundered through the agency of even one camera and its concomitants, pyro, hypo and hydro T Fortunately, the enlarger, a home-made contraption of faithful performance but unwieldy dimensions, now rest* in the perpetual limbo of things unwanted in the Lyall Bap tip, where keen, cruel-eyed rats scurry in the gloaming, and where the enlarger, unless it is discovered by foraging boys, will merge with the scrap of motor cars-, oil drums, tomato cans, and superannuated bedsteads undergoing treatment " by the Bradford system." A consummation devoutly to be hoped for, and a good riddance. Three cheers for Bradford! SEWING MACHINES, CYCLES. PIANOS. Encumbrances, all of them, with parstress on the last item. Up to a brief fortnight ago I had managed to survive the " slings and arrows" without a bicycle, in moderate enjoyment of all faculties normally incorporated in an average citizen in the late forties. Now I find myself lured abroad on the most chimerical missions, to the detriment of that old and fruitful institution, the kitchen garden. Chick weed, speedwell (gentlest of weeds) and groundsel flourish apace where early-late carrots should thrive, but don't. But the tyranny of the push-bike and the call of sleek bitumen have obtained, as the politicians say, a " stranglehold" beyond all prospects of resistance. Indeed, the genesis of this article was prompted in vague outline by the spectacle of a fine and buoyant ocean-going tug at Port Chalmers —a floating encumbrance, so it seemed, but with a name that awoke a sympathetic interest. This was a good 10 miles from home, and the kitchen garden, with the added enormity of tentative fishing from the wbarf end. The only hope of redemption is that the cycle will eventually go the way of all tilings outworn, unless —unhallowed thought —it is traded in part payment for a larger encumbrance on four wheels —an improbable contingency, however, thanks to past experience with the genus auto, of second vintage, as it were. Of sewing machines one had perhaps hold discreet silence. But all housewives will agree that on shifting day they might almost be called downright encumbrances. No such compromise is admissible in dealing with pianos. Their weight alone condemns them. Think of the damaged polish and lost castors; the injured toes, shins and feelings of blasphemous and perspiring carriers. Pianos stand, and not infrequently fall, condemned by all nomadic householders, " gross, open, palpable as a mountain." ENVOY: THE TYPEWRITER. And now, at a time when I am plan- ' ning to discard some superfluous gear, both mental and material, the typewritd has become a very literal burden. Tt stands in the corner (or will stand, when this is finished) overhung by the coils of a rawhide lasso, a relic of strenuous action on many dust-swirling rodeos under an alien sky. The typewriter boasts a much-labelled exterior —Rio, Melbourne, Auckland. Capetown, Timaru, Buenos Aires and Sydney, in a patchwork of multi-liued stickers slapped on at all angles by irreverent porters; but the lariat, so tough and springy, and still unbroken, might well illustrate Emerson's dictum, " Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity." "I," it might say to the typewriter, "am life; you can never be other than an echo." Yet in justice to faithful Junior it is only fair to state that he carries a faulty ribbon and sluggish back-spacer.