Hopping in Kent and “Winkling” in Margate

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 236, 24 December 1927, Page 22

Hopping in Kent and “Winkling” in Margate

THE SUN'S London correspondent, Miss Pamela Travers, writes soyne fleeting impressions of South-east England, ■with a note on the new wire fabric and a jest or two, for extra measu re. i

'ORE airplanes missing—- | the Atlantic must be full of them. I have a very shrewd suspicion that the lost people of i Atlantis, being envious

of our airy vehicles, have drawn them down to their own watery abode and are there debating how they may best use the magical birds for their own ends. Perhaps they are planning a great invasion of this world which rose up in the place of their own lovely land and they will come riding upon the lost wings, spears in hands, yellow hair flying . . . But it is a sad and anxious time for the people who still clutch at the lagt straws of hope and stretch out their desire to impossible lengths to embrace the lost ones.

Last week, when motoring along the south-west coast of England, I saw a little red airplane taking passengers up for five-minute, five-shilling flights. Each landing seemed perilous enough even upon the soft green grass of fields, but the grey hills of the Atlantic would be full of still more terrible dangers. I found the south-east corner of England which is Kent, far more interesting than I had expected. I had, of course,]seen Canterbury before, but the sight of that shining fairy cathedral, which surely was built by queens to the music of their harps, is always new and lovely. I traversed the old Pilgrim’s Way and thought of slow, brave feet that passed along it when it was a less easy and kindly thoroughfare than it is to-day. I saw the place where the four knights, misinterpreting their King, slew St. Thomas a Becket at his prayers. Close by him lies Edward the Black Prince, his coat jf mail and his sword hanging above his tomb. It was with difficulty that the car made its way through the narrowness of Watling Street, which runs from Rome to London. In London it is now an ordinary street inhabited—not by saints and pilgrims —but by gentlemen who sell furs wholesale.

But to the coast. For the first time I saw Margate which has always been associated in my mind with bank holidays and whelks and cockles, the exchanging of hats and the song:

“Ow, for another dy at Mawrgite, ■ Good old Mawrgite by the sea. Twenty ;in the boat, all in the rain She-outing, "Bowtman, won’t yer tike us home again.”

I found it, however, extraordinarily “refeened,” with a nice friendly atmosphere about it. Perhaps I went there on a very good day. But after spending the night at Deal, where I ate a whelk and got indigestion and saw my first pier concert and got drenched, Margate was a happy relief. Oysters, too, which cannot be obtained in London for love, money or bribery this season, were abundant in Margate, and the fat babies sprawling on the sands at Margate were just as nice, though not so sunny-haired and sunny-faced as the fat babies that turn New Zealand beaches into a series of noble fortresses and palaces of sand. They were hop-pickipg in Kent as I passed through—it looked as if all London had gathered there her beauty and chivalry. Children -were piled on top of one another in perambulators while their parents plucked the green vines feverishly. There was much laughter and badinage, and an occasional snatch of song as the work went on. There

were little huts outside which grandmothers, apparently brought for domestic and not hop-picking purposes, fried bacon over bright flames and kept an eye peeled for perambulator mishaps. Two small very fat little boys -were sitting on a tussock of grass clad in nothing but their woolly vests, each chewing a hop deliberately and ruminatively. They will probably be doing the same thing 20 years hence — though decency will compel them to be more comprehensively dressed and their seats will be bar-stools. My sporting note —Betty Nuthall has arrived back from America to-day, and was this morning given a civic reception and a silver rose bowl by her native town, Richmond. It has always been a matter of -wonder to me why people who hit balls over nets or into stumps and those who mqke a great deal of money in treacle or some other commodity, and those who take off taxes —Qr put them on—are the only ones w’ho receive civic receptions. In England, that is. In France —and I believe in Sweden —these honours are offered to artists and musicians and authors and men of science as well. But in England, bless her Victorian heart, these people are scallywags, and who ever heard of a seallyway being recognised, let alone honoured, by a city?

I have recently been to the Exhibition of Photographs at the Princes Galleries, and I am thinking that there will be soon no need nor work for portrait painters now that the camera is becoming so impressionistic. Some of the photographs were positively Cubist, and one w’hich looked like an egg with a halo round it sitting on a wedge of black velvet -was called Miss Joanna Phillibane. Poor Joanna —if she sends that to her friends at Christmas they will get a horrid shock. The other photographs—those that are not impressionistic —are in the paleo-chocolato-boxo style, very pretty, very vapid, very like a portrait from the Cadogan-Cooper brush. I wonder what posterity will think of our faces if this sort of thing goes on—they will surely think, if they come upon our pictured selves, that they were fathered by a lot of beautiful, perfect, village idiots. The photograph of a friend of mine who has the most lovely heaven-aspir-ing nose and rather small eyes like the eyes of a particularly nice and humorous lizard, shows her with a perfectly straight, quite-Greeian profile and eyes which are as sorrowful and large as Deidre’s. The camera cannot lie? Perhaps not —but the toucher-up is an expert at it. “The bride who was beautifully dressed in a steel frock with a gold train wore a veil of wire and was attended by six pretty bridesmaids clad in white-metal.” Unless science pulls itself together and has a close season for inventions that is the sort of thing you will be reading soon in the reports of fashionable weddings. At Olympia yesterday I saw cloth made of the finest of fine steel wires—and gold wires and silver wires. If dresses are to be made of it dry-cleaners will have to close down, for all it W’ill need is a little polishing with Brasso. It was rather like

starched muslin imitated in metal but very pliable, and it glittered as tli« meeting of Henry of England and tha King of France must have glittered at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. This metal cloth was strong, but not very warm. If it comes into fashion I suppose we will wear gold and silver in the summer and cast iron and tin (corrugated! for the winter. There i» however, no serious talk of this. Speaking of scientists—there is a grand Scientific Congress taking place at the moment. And they are discussing, not as you might suppose, something new and exciting—but Dar win’s old, old theory. The Church and Science are jousting nobly—neither will give way. “Humanity was moulded by the Great Hand, blown upon by the Divine Breath.” says tha Church. "Monkeys, apes, gorillas, baboons!" retorts Science with irritating emphasis. Very well, very welladmitted that my grandfather a thousand times removed was a chimpanzee —but do let me forget it. It gives tne no pleasure to know that he had a tail and could swing from branch to branch with it while employing his hands in the plucking of coeoanuts. It gives me even less delight to know that two or three scientists are convinced that humanity sprang originally from jelly-fish. Indeed. I find that an insult hard to hear in silence. If I had to choose between ancesters I would have an ape every time.

The Guards have gone from St. James’s Palace and from Buckingham Palace. I was shocked to find sombre khaki in place of the red coat and the striped trousers as I passed yesterday. Had the toy soldiers been defeated in the night in some gigantic nurseryfloor manoeuvres What would the King do without his brilliant little protectors —and the Prince of Wales? Then I remembered that the King would not be home until next month and that the Guards always go away on manoeuvres in September. But palaces lose their brilliance when the Guards go from them. Khaki is reminiscent of sorrowful days, but there is about the gold and the scarlet and the glittering Apaulets a suggestion of playwars, of happy unreality; an assurance that things are not what they seem that is very comforting. I shall be glad w-hen the King and the Prince and the Guards come back. London is empty without them, and news that has not the Royal Presence as a seal Is no news at all. lam no Roundhead —I!

A grand-niece of Tennyson’s has put up a verse-making hand and demanded attention. She says that her great name Is her handicap—that she would have been half-way on the road to fame already had it not been for the weight of that. Here is\ a typical specimen of her “works”: LIFE. Only a tiny spark which, gently fanned. Bursts into flame and flickms, feebly slow. Fanned by sweet zephyr, drenched by every \ storm, It fights to live, altho’ it bums so low Hm! I do not think It Is only her name that is holding her back! TAIL PIECE: — Mrs. Biggs: “And ’owjalike yer noo fust floor back, Mrs Diggs?” Mrs Diggs: “Well, she might be worse. But wot I do say is she’s 'aughty, and if there’s one thing I do ’ate —it’s ’aught.” I had to tell you that one.