Mundane Musings

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 92, 9 July 1927, Page 19

Mundane Musings

A Spot of Beer! (.Written for THE SUN.) “My dear,” said the Fat Woman Who Sits on Committees, wagging her plump the whole trouble with the working classes is ... beer! . ..mi she sat back in her chair looking extremely wise and. clever. “Beer?” I queried rather vacantly. *‘Why? Do they drink such an inferior brand that they all feel queer, or something?” ‘•Tut-tut . . . you misunderstand me. I mean that it is their indulgence in beer that makes for all this unrest among them. You know, it makes agitators get up and talk about the right of the people to self-government and how they ought to follow in the splendid footsteps of their Russian com-

rades. They wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t for beer and these dreadful public houses where they go and wantonly sink their wages in getting intoxicated.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” 1 remarked. “I’m a perfectly good working woman and I don’t drink much beer . . . not to the extent of getting intoxicated, anyway . . . and I know lots of others of the ‘working classes’ who are perfectly capable of walking past a public house without feeling an overpowering desire well up in their bosoms to rush in and drown their sorrows in drink.” “But, ha-ha, darling, you’re not a working woman! How absurd, ha-ha-ha! ” “Ha-ha-ha,” I echoed in a blank manner. “Oh no, I’m not a working woman. I only play, and come down to the office every day and nearly every night because it’s such fun, and my energetic temperament wouldn’t allow me to stay home and breakfast leisurely in a civilised fashion at a civilised hour. Oh, dear no, I’m not a working woman . . . how stupid of me to say I was!” "We’re rather getting away from the point, are we not, my dear? I was talking about beer, and the real working classes. Don’t you agree that beer and public houses should be done '.way with?” "Done away with?” I inquired *eebly. “Done away with? Oh, no, please! Oh, dear no. I couldn't do without my pet public houses. Why, there’s the dearest, quaintest, little p ib where we often drift in for a spot o beer ...” But; the Fat Woman Who . . . etc., Uoze me with a look and didn’t wait Ij hear about my picturesque little uuntry pub with its funny, old-fash-i -ned proprietress and ire quaint oldworld, dirty, dusty, romantic air. I was left alone to think about beer and public houses and the working classes. leer' Pubs . . . and workers. P'raps they do go together . . . but L wondered if after all that isn’t just because drinking beer is the cheapest known way of relieving the eternal monotony of work, work, work, and rotten, sordid conditions of life. Would the F.W.W.S.O.C. be so

scathing if the workers could afford to get decently in their cups on a nice expensive brand of bubbly, deftly poured into graceful, long-stemmed glasses of crystal by a silent-footed deferential flunkey, who lifted the bottle of fizz with tender care from its icy bucket? Would she? Methinks not. If I suggested such a thing to her, she would, of course, freeze me up again, or think I was mad and adopt a pitying air. Champagne in one’s home would be an entirely different matter! But beer! Bah!

Monotony . . . what a fearful thing it can be . . . even apart from the most serious kind of monotony . . .

the deadly, stifling toiling monotony of sweating and pinching and scraping to lead what the world with its fictitious senses of values chooses to call a “respectable” life . . . there’s all the petty, little monotonies of life . . . the knowing just what everyone will say and do, and that at 9 o’clock you’ll be in the office in the morning and the next morning and the morning after

... or at 10 o’clock maybe you’ll be washing up and dusting and sweeping and dusting and washing up and sweep-

ing again at all the other 10 o’clocks there are.

If only something- would happen . . . if one could turn the world upside clown occasionally . . . go down Queen Street in a bathing suit instead of turning up to work in a neat little, drab little tailored suit ... if one could say the things one thinks at all the inane meetings one goes to, just for the fun of seeing what all the dear old, stodgy old, platitudinous people would do ... if one could do anything at times to relieve the monotony and sameness of doing the same old thing at the same old time in the same old way every day for days and days and still more days. And that gets back to the question of beer. After all beer’s only a synonym for many things. If you don’t like beer . . . and there are people who don’t . . you probably take up some other more expensive hobby as a means of getting rid of your pet monotony. . . I wonder if the Fat Woman and all the I'est of it. would like to be told that she’s not really interested in all the “charitable” work she gives so much of her time to? Would she appreciate it if one blew up to her and told her calmly and lucidly that she was worse than “the working classes” she denounces so bitterly? That all her “untiring committee work” was done for purely selfish reasons . . . that she was afraid of monotony and so rushed into a thousand little trifling movements for supplying Red Flannel Shirts to the Natives of Uganda . . . for sending rolls and rolls and rolls of bandages to all the little child-workers in the big factories of China . . . when they’d probably appreciate a good feed or a night’s sleep more . . . and all the other little futile things she does? Not that all women who sit on committees are like that. Lots of them, of course, accomplish an untold amount of real work, work of value that is never really appreciated. But my Fat Woman makes a fetish of her committees and is never anywhere else. Still, I don’t think she’d care to be told about it. Do you? That’s that . . . the paper’s finished . . . I’ll just have time to catch the same old ten-thirty tram home. What about a spot of beer? . HU IA MASK.