CURRENT COMMENT

Taranaki Daily News, 8 September 1934, Page 13 (Supplement)

CURRENT COMMENT

OTHER POINTS OF VIEW

(By

M.O.S.)

Taranaki ran—fairly beaten., * * * * It has been rumoured about that, in order that the Auckland team shall know just what Hawke’s Bay footballers are doing this afternoon, the Bay team is to be fitted with radio beacons, and the visitors given direction finders. There is probably no mor6 truth in that than in the suggestion, evidently circulated maliciously from a Northern centre, that the Auckland players intend to wear cow-bells the following Saturday. * * * * A. P. F. Chapman, former English cricket captain, was knocked down by lightning, while playing golf near Folkestone. And if he’d still been playing cricket it would probably have been Larwood. *. * * * The wife of a Sussex rector won an ankle competition, states a cable message. It is to be hoped her feet did not turn to clay as a result. * *■ * * There should be a Shakepearean name for the town’s new park, said Mr. W. L. Kennedy at Stratford the other night. Then why is it that the dialogue at borough council meetings there is so often Gilbertian? * * * * Hie Mersey tunnel reminds us that where there’s a will there's a subway. * * * * "Use of Moneys”—And they actually had to have a Royal Commission about it’. * * * * Miss Elsie Andrews simply won’t have anything to do with war these days. One of these new-fangled pan-Pacific ideas, one imagines. * * * * But why should Miss Andrews worry about war ? What’s a few hundred women here or there? Nobody misses them until there’s a murder. *’* * * On Ink. Miss Patricia Hackett, the Adelaide society -barrister-solicitor-producer-play-wright-actress girl who in the gallery of the Legislative Assembly deluged with ink the pressman who had dared to question the merit of her so-artistic play, has established a dangerous, a possibly, disastrous precedent. • Pressmen the world over are perturbed. They hold conferences. If and when' they sleep, they dream inky dreams of deluges of ink, geysers of it, inky rain and inky jsnow. Ink and its menace obsesses them. They wonder if politicians will follow the lead; or borough councillors; or park boards; or red cross societies; or hospital committees. “Ink for Ink!” Bon Dieu, what a slogan to set the world ablaze! Liberty, equality, and ink for ■ink 1 Cub reporters are resigning in drovas, sub-editors sl-ink from room to room furtively, silent for once. Our four dramatic critics are learning to swim. But ah, we old timers for whom there is no hope that we should escape from the toils of the eity room—there is -fib hope, indeed? - The Frankenstein monster of our own creation will strangle us slowly. There is but one thing to lessen the tension—as frequently as we can, we slip out and get inked. J" * * *

Theother evening one of the staff exceeded his, quota of pork (he said anyway it was only a suggested restriction) and had a nightmare in consequence. He dreamt he was an. All Black walking through London in football boots. “Excuse me,” whispered a policeman, “but would you mind tying up your laces? The tinkling is disturbing the ■ silence of our night.” “Certainly,” he replied, and rose into the stratosphere. He told us it must have been the stratosphere because it was strategy that tbok him there, and it was surely nowhere on earth because if it had been there would have been talk about taxes. And there wasn’t. Suddenly he changed into an oyster and felt his beard being pulled by a fierce lobster while a startled whitebait stared at him with goggle eyes out of a wine glass. The whole incident reminded him how much he loved oysters, and he sang a soft lament: ' They told me spring was coming on, Told me with shining eyes That wage-cuts soon would be restored And wool would doubtless rise. There’s whitebait now for those who care, But whitebait make me sick: Their haunting dead eyes blackly - bulge Their figures are too chic. A parboiled lobster’s beetling brow Bespeaks a criminal mind, Its joints look most rheumaticky Its pincers most unkind. You have your springtime gaieties And have your springtime cold! The birds’ nests and the daffodils Will leave me unconsoled. For oysters are out of season now Raw or scalloped, stewed or fried. In vain I long to have them back Bearded and jellified 1 Shush! “Citizen,” who complains of secrecy in the deliberations of our Civic Fathers, is a fool. In the very first place, discretion is far, far the better part of valour. Does he riot realise that the end is always justified by the means? He should have heard the Debating Society last night! Give publicity to their discussions, indeed! The man is a moron. Has he never heard of the War Office or the C.I.D. ? Are Cabinet meetings ' open to the Press ? Or International diplomatic discussions ? No: They are not. But do not imagine that we are making invidious contra-distinctions. Far from it. We would hate to think that our Civic Fathers were either militaristic, criminological, political, or diplomatic. Thank Heaven they are plain, honest, downright men with the decency to spare the public the grisly details of “how they did it.” * * * * An enterprising fellow recently tried to cure his friend of hiccoughs by shooting a revolver behind him to shock him. The friend will hiccough no more: he was killed! The tragedy recalls a man we once knew of similar ladical type, who used to shy potatoes at people so that they need not trouble to take their hats off. He invariably cracked the necks of bottles rather than tamper with the cork, and one day when his sister got her mother’s ring stuck on her finger he took out his scalp knife and pared’the finger off. He was later discovered haminering in his brothers spots when the latter caugnt measles, and died eventually by cutting off his face to save the trouble of shaving.