Brief Items From London

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26774, 18 May 1948, Page 5

Brief Items From London

From E. G. Webber, N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent ( , LONDON, May 16. Weather experts have given a guarantee that the Whitsun holiday will be fine in England and Wales, though they are not prepared to extend this guarantee to Scotland and Northern Ireland. Even without this encouragement, however, all holiday resorts on the western arid southern coasts had received heavy reservations, and the railways were well prepared for the usual hectic Whitsun holidaymakers’ rush to the seaside. The King, Queen, and Princess Margaret are spending the holiday at Balmoral. Feted in Norway Mr Churchill is being feted in Norway, where he has added a peaked Norwegian student’s cap with its long black tassel to his famous collection of headgear. Norwegian enthusiasm for Britain’s war-time leader knows no bounds. When Mr Churchill expressed a mild desire to go fishing a group of farmers who own land along the banks of one of Norway’s best fishing streams immediately presented him with the right to fish there for life. Traffic Beacons

London’s Belisha beacons, to-day only a memorial to a once well-known political personality, are to have companions in the shape of posts surmounted by inverted metal cones. So far these new beacons are nameless. They are intended to mark streets where vehicles are not allowed to stop except at certain specified hours. This fact, however, is emerging very slowly, and speculation about the meaning of the new signs has been brisk and varied. One suggestion overheard in Fleet street is that they are atom bomb detectors.

Midget Car Racing " The latest sports importation into Britain from America is midget car racing, but on present indications it does not appear likely to repeat the spectacular success of midget golf when it arrived between the wars. A crowd of 45,000 assembled at Stamford Bridge stadium to w&tch four teams of drivers dash round the track at a maximum speed of 35 miles an hour. At the end of the fifth race, when the announcer inquired through the microphdne whether the audience was enjoying itself, the crowd roared emphatically, “ No.”

This midget car invasion is being backed financially by Mr Robert Topping, the millionaire husband of the film actress, Lana Turner (her fourth!. Mrs Topping, who has already upset the London press by keeping its representatives waiting for a press conference, is due to make personal appearances at Stamford Bridge to boost midget car racing. Sports writer’s are predicting that not even this additional attraction, will prove sufficient to rescue the midget cars from public indifference.