A LETTER FROM HOME.

Otago Witness, Issue 3859, 28 February 1928, Page 67

A LETTER FROM HOME.

' .By Sheila Scobie Macdonald.

(Special fob the Otago Witness.) January 9. My mind is a blank this week, for a Christmas holiday which began with ’flu and bronchitis, and ended with a burst pipe and a flooded house is rather apt to squeeze out all other matters from the mind of even the most placid of mortals. We arrived home on a bitter winter’s morning to find an icy, dripping house, plus the following large inscription tacked to the kitchen door.

“Be careful on entering. Ceiling may collapse at any moment. All particulars next door.”

As soon as my reeling senses and tottering limbs could suppoit me I betook myself next door, but as there happens to be two “ next doors,” explanations were somewhat delayed. The magnitude of the disaster was, however, soon made known to me. A pipe had -burst in the bathroom. The bathroom is over the kitchen, hence the warning about the ceiling.

What a homecoming! We wandered about disconsolately, lifting the soggy rugs, laying them out on the still soggier grass on the lawn in the melancholy and entirely futile hope that the sun might be induced to shine on them and at least thaw, if not dry them. Then we made paste (blessings be on the man who invented gas stoves!) and pasted up all the wallpaper which had swooned and fallen from the walls with shock, and lit gas fires and coal fires and wondered generally just why misfortune should have singled us out specially and not our neighbours. My “ daily,” after the manner of her species, got stage fright and departed, murmuring: “ Wot with my rhumaties that bad and the ceiling likely to fall on my ’ed,” etc. So that was that.

“ Next door,” who is a male creature with a rabbit mouth and the (hitherto deeply disguised) heart of a hero, had obse; ved the flood about the second dav of its flowing, and, breaking a window, had turned off gas and water aLthe main, and so saved the back premises from complete collapse. But as, if my house collapsed his would collapse too, his valour was not altogether disinterested. Ihe ony really happy, smiling individual is a pudgy-faced little man who for nearly two years has persisted hopefully in pushing a card eve: y week into my letter box, reminding me that in time of stress he was always at hand to oblige with any sort or kind of household repair. “Next door,” at his wits end, called him in, and there he was in possession when I arrived, and there he looks like remaining.

It wouldn’t ’a appened,” he ••tpeats for my special benefit. “ if you’d ’a turned off your water at the main before you shut up the ’ouse.” He is complete master of the situation, and beams upon my melancholy as he mounts his steps, and, prodding the kitchen ceiling professionally, says elm. rily : It 11 be down on your ’ed, mum, if you don’t let me see to it, an' a nice mess that’ll be.”

I mournfully remark that the mess couldn’t be much greater than it already is, and brightly he endeavours to enlighten by supreme ignorance of wet ceilings and their ways.

“Next door” is more consoling, and assures me that all will be well, and that my pudgy-faced adviser is merely “trying it on.” Under his guidance I have gone down into my own cellar, and learnt how to turn innumerable rings and taps, which hitherto in my feminine way I bad regarded with the utmost suspicion as being likely to “go off ” at any moment. So now that the stable door is open I know exactly how I might have kept it securely shut, which all said and done is not exactly consoling. But on all sides one hears an outcry against Engish plumbing, with its entirely unnecesary exposure of piping, and if the weather prophets are right and next winter the Thames will be .ruzen over and the British Isles be held in an ice grip for more than six weeks, the outcry will reach a scream. But how wonderful if icy winters meant long, hot summers, for of all lovely countries in a fine spring or summer England is surely the loveliest. She is so soft, so exquisitely green, so gloriously wooded and watered, with her old-world villages, each more fascinating tlian the last on every side, and over all that “ something ” which makes one f<-el so fiercely and proudly British. But wet cold summers disgruntle everyone, and more than disgruntle, too, for up goes the death rate, and the daily papers glory in giving us detailed accounts of all the ills that attack humanity when the sun ceases to shine.

Personally, a day in London to my mind counteracts a good many hours of sunlcssness, and no matter how depressed has been my mood when I slam my front door behind me, when half an hour later my train slides into Victoria, I am an entirely carefree and happy creature, at large in the greatest city in the world. A quick walk, if the morning be fine, down Buckingham Palace road, a lawdle past Gorringc’s windows* another dawdle round the palace just in the hopes of seeing someone or something interesting, and then across Green Park to Piccadilly. No one could give a thought to even a kitchen ceiling in Piccadilly, or in Bond street, that Mecca of the rich,

with its little stream of lesser folk staring wistfully at shop windows crowded with things that only the fortunate ones can buy. Lunch “on the cheap ” somewhere—and how good the cheap can be in London—then perhaps a play or a cinema, or even more shops, and tea—a nice tea with music and pretty women and well-set-up men at every table, and beautiful mannequins sauntering up and down. No, you can’t really suffer from sunlessness with London at hand to effect a cure.

I went to one of the Sunday afternoon concerts at the Albert Hall yesterday. It is rather nice if one is lunching in town to go on to these concerts and so while away an otherwise dull afternon. There is some talk and much discussion over the future of this great hall at present. Its famous echo simply refuses to be scotched, and the really musical are greatly nettled thereby. I am sorry to confess that I rather like the echo than otherwise. It has a hollow, rather eerie, effect on sound, and, personally, I find it pleasant. A frightful thing to admit, but true.

Sir Thomas Beecham’s opera scheme, judging by his recent bitingly sarcastic remarks, is not altogether hopeful. He says that we are not only the most unmusical race in the world, but the laziest, and since the radio we have become comatose, ’ and are producing a generation which w’ill never get out of bed at all. “ Nothing in England is serious,” he remarked bitterly. “ The whole British Empire is founded on a platform of comedy and farce.” The result of this has been quite a little plain speaking all round. Sir Landon Ronald, on the other hand, disagrees about the deplorable effect of wireless on music generally, though as regards the attitude of the man in the street he agrees with his famous colleague. He told rather an amusing story at a musicians’ dinner the other night. During the war, he said, Mr Pett-Kidge met a wounded soldier on his way to a concert. “ '’’hat will be very nice for you,” he said kindly. “ I wish I had shell shock,” observed the soldier gloomily. “ Why?” inquired Mr Pett-Ridgc.

“ Because shell shock patients haven't to go to concerts, and 1 have,” was the deplorable answer.

The snow and the floods being now past, and therefore no longer of interest, and nothing else in any way exciting having come along to take their place, we have been treated to reflections on our national morals, the deplorable results of secret divorce, and so on and so forth. As the school holidays are drawing to a close, teachcis (mostly of the feminine gender) are rushing into print airing their views, and to read even half what is written would make any foreigner chuckle to think that at last England really is going to the dogs. He’d be wrong, however, for though perhaps there may be a larger proportion of unrepentant and unashamed sinners than in the good old days, the vast majority still slog along in a normal humdrum way, relying for excitement on the lurid newspaper accounts of the doings of the minority, or rushing to see a side of life they themselves would never tolerate for a moment, on stage or screen. And yet whenever a really good picture is shown or a really good play staged it is simply rushed.

The play “Marigold,” for instance, has run for months, and the theatre io always packed. It is charming— hi delightful clean story, beautifully dressed and perfectly acted, and, as I have already said, has proved abundantly that such plays ar- still popular. It is the same with films—a gooo clean picture is always rushed, 'mt, sad to say, there are not too many going. Many of the British films are very poor, mawky as regards the story and altogether unsatisfactory. Small wonder then that the kinenia goer, living an ordinary life in an ordinary home, rushes to see the American film, ' here poor typists in diaphanous underwear are depicted reclining on luxurious beds in an apartment a princess might envy, and filling every hour of their hectic 24 with a fresh thrill. I quite like it myself, to be quite candid, and heave a sigh of relief when the her? downs the villain and takes the beauteous maiden ii. his man!-- arms.