LONDON LETTER FATHER CHRISTMAS COMES

Southland Times, Issue 23693, 16 December 1938, Page 4

LONDON LETTER FATHER CHRISTMAS COMES

Scientific Toys For Children

I FLOWER-GIRLS DISAPPEARING

(From Our Own Correspondent)

LONDON, November 19. Father Christmas seems to come to town earlier every year. He has been here now for over a week, and already one notices the number of children being dragged along the crowded streets of central London at the heels of mothers overburdened with parcels. There are men, too, carrying parcels—a thing they usually loathe; now, however, they have an expression of smug satisfaction at having a bothersome job done. Their only remaining worry is how to smuggle the parcel into AcaciaVilla without the kiddies—or perhaps the wife—or the whole crowd seeing it. The pavement toy-market in Holborn has already started, and unless one is careful one may tread on a miniature cat pursuing a tiny mouse. But these play things are chiefly, of course, for grown-ups.. Toys for the children are more scientific, more mechanical, than ever. Model aeroplanes have reached a high state of development, setting an example of mass production to the Air Ministry. One can also buy a perfect model of the latest type of London transport trolley-bus, complete with balloon tyres. The doll never dies, but is reincarnated for every generation of girlhood and even oftener. This year there are Lambeth Walkers, and a faithful representation of Mr Neville Chamberlain as an angler. No doubt there are other surprises which will be taken out of the luckybag nearer Christmas. The Japanese, with a tactlessness unusual for them, have had the audacity to send us a toy bomb. I expect it has reached New Zealand also. Some organization here is again warning people not to help to kill Chinese babies by buying Japanese toys.

We are to have the Mills Circus at Olympia as usual. Bertram Mills, who founded it and searched the world for turns has died, but his two sons are carrying on the tradition and we are promised,, among other things, 20 clowns and the highest-paid comedy circus act in the worlds one which has lately been paid £9OO a week in Berlin. There will also.be the Four Queens who will probably provide the biggest thrill, working as they will up in the roof, 90 feet above the ground. The most expensive number will be a bare-back performance, for it will cost the Mills brothers £1260 to bring the nine performers and their horses from Florida and send them home again. The one disappointment for the bright young people comes from the British Broadcasting Corporation, which has ruled that Christmas Day will be “like any other Sunday.” There will be no radio dance music, no variety acts, no usual* Christmas vaudeville party, and the Sunday programmes will close down at 10.30 p.m., “as we do, every Sunday night.” So one may safely forecast a run bn up-to-the-minute dance records, and the gramophone will work overtime in many a home. The mild weather is a great aid to early Christmas shoppers and has rejoiced the hearts of the farmers. Instead of the usual cold, dark, dank November weather, we have had days lately that have been as soft and balmy and sunny as those of a gracious springtime. Almost every record for the time of year has been broken. Until this year, in fact, the thermometer has never been known to go above 68 degrees in any part of the British Isles after the end of October, yet on November 5, Guy Fawkes Day, temperatures of 70 and 71 were recorded. Only the butchers are unhappy, for joints and steaks are left on their hands. In the country, the mild season has made it possible to leave stock out in the fields, eating fresh grass when they would normally be indoors eating hay and cattle-cake. And fresh grass means good milk. The warm weather has also given the re-cently-sown winter wheat and oats a chance to establish themselves in the ground before the frosts come, and the labour of lifting root crops like beet and mangels has been lightened .by dry soil. In suburban gardens, primroses and ' snowdrops are flowering alongside chrysanthemums and other autumn blooms. The autumn colouring of the countryside, with a health of leaves still on the trees, has beeri brighter and more brilliant than can be remembered for many years. CAP PILAR IN PORT

The little three-masted barque Cap Pilar is back in the Port of London after her wanderings over the world, but she will be off again to the Antipodes as soon as enough adventurous souls can be induced to join her at the “all-in” cost of £2oo—in advance The last time I saw her she was lying in Neutral Bay, Sydney. That was in' 1937. From there she went across the Tasman,' where one or two New Zealanders joined her, and then she wandered home through the Pacific and by way of the East Coast of America. The other day when I saw her again they were busy making everything ship-shape, for Mr F. A. Barnett, of Eltham, who is organizing the “expedition” wants to get away by New Year’s Day or thereabouts. They intend once more .to cruise off the beaten tracks, returning to Australian and New Zealand waters, and not returning until some time in 1940. The main purpose of the voyage, says Mr Barnett, is to give the 25 who will be on board a chance to do some of those things they have long wanted to do. There will be ample opportunities for good work by scientists, photographers and others. Already applications for berths have been received from two barristers, a school teacher, a former captain who wants to take his wife (a botanist), and a man who wants to experiment in colour photography and a builder.

THE FLOWER GIRLS London’s flower girls are a dying race. As someone remarked the other day, if Bernard Shaw had been born 30 years ago instead of 82 there would have been no Eliza Doolittle to meet her Pygmalion. For the Eliza Doolittles of Covent Garden, Piccadilly and the City of London have passed on. There are still the “flower girls,” of course. You can see them in the Strand, in the shadow of the fountain of Eros at Piccadilly, around St. Paul’s churchyard and in other favoured spots. But they rightly belong to another generation, and the youngest is nearer 60 than 50. The oldest, Mrs Norah Ryan, is well over 70.1 bought a tiny bunch of violets from her the other day at St. Paul’s churchyard. Her sister. Katherine, now 78, retired from business five years ago, but Mrs Ryan says she will never forsake the restless streets she has known and loved all her . life. The cold fact is that no more licenses are being granted for flower girls. The mothers and the grandmothers of these women Who remain were in the business. Most of them sold their first posies at the age of 12 or 13. Their mothers knew that, when they died, young Sarah or young Eliza would take their stand. There was a family tradition and a pride of daily “ownership” of a small strip of busy street. And now they all bemoan that “trade is not what it used

to be.” Once 30 of them used to stand in the middle of the road under the statue of Robert Peel near the churchyard. Now, the two remaining have been moved by the police to the footpath, and one can almost detect a resentment in their eyes when they look at the traffic lights on roads no longer safe for the peaceful pursuit of selling flowers. There used to be as many as 50 flower girls at the foot of Eros. Now you will find only two, squatting on this little island with the traffic cutting them off from most of their likely trade. London can be remorseless when it likes, and it has certainly shown little pity for the picturesque flower girls of its more leisurely days.

WESTMINSTER ABBEY Thousands of visitors from overseas have missed much of the beauty of the Westminster Abbey interior because centuries of dust and grime have coated the magnificent marble pillars and shafts supporting the vaulted roof. The same applies to the interior of St. Paul’s, and I remember many telling me how disappointed they have been to discover the interior of these great piles so drab and dirty. Now, however, the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey are to remove the cause for. reproach. They have set iiy hand more cleaning work which will take years to complete. Tall scaffolding was this week erected in the south transept I against the great pillar rising close by | the Shakespeare memorial. Prelimin- | ary work had actually been begun just Uefore the Coronation, but it had to be postponed. Now it has been resumed in earnest and a highly-skilled staff will be engaged to restore the magnificence of the Abbey’s beautiful marble work, which really is among the finest I in Europe, although one would never think so to see it in its present condition. The polishing and cleaning calls for extreme patience. All these pillars are of Purbeck marble from the Purbeck quarries in Dorset, and were shipped by sea to Westminster in the 13th century. Each cost the equivalent of £l6OO in present-day money. Originally they formed the Abbey’s most striking feature, and those Londoners who never tire of wandering into this sanctuary at odd times are anxiously waiting to see something of their full glory.

AEROPLANE SPEEDS The world moves so fast these days that one of man’s recurring problems is to keep up with it with some measure of safety. Perhaps it was to be expected that the British Air Line Pilots’ Association would find this question of increasing speed a very real problem. At any rate, its officials have begun to collect data about the medical aspects of commercial flying to ascertain whether the higher speeds at which pilots now operate require modifications in the terms of their employment. Under the present regulations a pilot is not allowed to fly more than 125 hours a month. But this, limit was imposed in the early days of flying when air liners did not cruise at more than 100 miles an hour. Flying pay then formed an important part of a pilot’s emoluments. Now the big airline companies have consolidated flying pay with annual salary. Moreover, speeds have risen to more than 170 miles an hour, so that pilots complete double the mileage within their 125-hour month than they did formerly. Then there is also the question whether more fatigue is caused by high-speed flying and whether resting gaps should be allowed between flying periods. Soon, Imperial Airways liners will be cruis’ng at 200 miles an hour and more. With each spurt in speed, the human element becomes more important. Man made his machines, but he has to be sure that they do not get the better of him in health and nervous strain.

ADVICE ON MARRIAGE

“How to be happy though married” might well have been the title of a little Government sixpenny publication issued this week. It is not often that His Majesty’s Stationery Office gives itself the pleasure of indulging in other than stern political and departmental reports and researches. But this little book by a London Registrar of Marriages under the prosaic title of “The Marriage Ceremony of Great Britain and Ireland” shows that even a stationery office can dip into the humanities. The author, Mr Walter Grimaldi, has married 25,000 couples, more than any man in Britain, so he speaks with more than a little authority-when he sets out to give advice. Slovenliness, he warns, is an early cause for a hus- , band’s first cross word. On the whole, men are more finicketty animals than is usually suspected. “Slovenliness,” we are told, “is often drifted into by the young wife and then emulated by the husband. It is so easy to dress careJessly first thing in the morning or to have to hurry over the task through’ oversleeping. At all costs remain lovely for your husband—not slovenly.” And to the bridegroom Mr Grimaldi says: “A young husband in the first stages of marriage makes a great fuss of his goodbye in the morning and on hi* return in the evening; but carelessly he eventually lets it become a peck as he leaves in the morning and forgets to peck altogether on his return. A woman particularly needs one thing and that is to be happy. She will not argue with i the mind, it is the heart that matters with her. Real affection is not always a matter of saying dear and darling. It is often saying nothing at all, and doing things you hate. Incidentally, did you know that your first wedding anniversary is your cotton wedding, your second paper, your third leather or straw, your fifth wooden, your seventh woollen and your tenth tin? The King has lent to. the British Museum from his collection at Windsor | Castle a Maori Chief’s carved wooden staff, with white hair tufts attached, which was brought and presented, to Queen Victoria by the Maori Chiefs in 1884. Another interesting gift to the museum is a beautiful kiwi feather cloak from New Zealand given to the donor’s husband, Mr William Carey Hill in 1875.