CURRENT COMMENT

Taranaki Daily News, 23 February 1935, Page 13 (Supplement)

CURRENT COMMENT

OTHER POINTS OF VIEW

(By

M.O.S.)

I It is stated, on fairly reliable authority, that several New Plymouth shopkeepers were put out by the weather on Friday morning. * * # • “Meat talks at London" announces a sensational headline. We didn’t see how that can happen with these modern refrigerating chambers! # * * • Though the tracks on the mountain are rough Poole’s sole is exceedingly tough When they asked, “How’s the skin?” He replied with a grin, “I don’t know. It’s not pumiced I enough!” • • ♦ * • A New Plymouth man, one of the 20 ’■New Zealand draughts players selected to play an international match with U.S.A. by correspondence, has posted Ws first moves. It is estimated his games will take about 12 months to com3?lete, each move being conveyed separately by the ordinary mail channels. A suggestion has been brought forward that the same system might be applied to surf championships to avoid all the trouble and excitement of temperamental teams travelling far from their native sea. But M.O.S. put on his seer’s spectacles and vetoed the idea—for this .was what He saw. (The names in this story are not purely fictitious and no inexperienced swimmers need apply.) Wellington October move: We get quickly off the mark. and are in the water before you dig your toes in. New Plymouth November move: We suppose we must have forgotten something; but finally we do get off. Wellington December move: We shoot through the breakers like torpedoes. You are very far behind. New Plymouth January move: Imagining we are rescuing one of the sea senseless twenty-three, we pass you at a dog paddle. Wellington February move: (The secretary having a birthday party appointment in April and being rather hurried about his training.) Reaching our patients slightly behind you we rip inwards, hand over fist, and sling our bronzed torsos with a last devastating bound upon the tape. We win by a yard. It has been a clean battle • and good sportsmanship has been shown throughout New Plymouth March 'move: Regret your team is disqualified. The date on which you record victory happened to be a day on which the surf at Fitzroy was so high that no swimmer could reach the buoy unless accustomed to saving defenceless women’and children on an open coast. (A pastime to which you are unaccustomed). We therefore regret to announce an appalling tragedy of heroism at sea. Your learn was drowned to a man. It was Only their indominatable spirits which breasted the tape with bronzed torsos. • • « .* Diluted. , , Well at last we have disposed of the Tough Guy. “We feel there will be rather a freshet in the rivers if this rain keeps up,” we remarked the other evening when a cloudburst or two had descended on our umbrella and a seven foot wall of water shot out of a side street and swept away the office chariot sixteen horses and all. The Tough Guy grunted and braced his bow legs against the raging torrent. At that moment there was the sound of thunder below which was well known as an evil porent by the Ancient Romans. The Tough Guy jumped, flipping an eel into his overcoat pocket whence he removed it thoughtfully and extracted its fangs ab-sent-mindedly with his penknife. “Of course,” he went on relentlessly, “the rain here in winter is considerably heavier than these autumn showers, but people get used to it after a year or two.” “When I was on the Murrunibidgee,” began the Tough Guy, with a tremor in his voice . . . But the story was doomed to the limbo of unuttered things. At that moment an untwined bolt of gents suiting, a beer barrel, seventeen drowned rats, a whitebait, four trout and an upcountry farmer who had arrived in town by way of the Mangaotuku, became entangled in the Tough Guy’s nether limbs and he went down bubbling yellow foam. "At that moment we became involved with a milking plant, four crates of cigars, and 18 yards of summer floral print ourselves . . . and followed him. We came up together and clung to a common Fitzroy lifesaver who had been practising belt work from kerb to kerb. “Of course, Bill,” we explained, “sometimes .the rain in June and. July gets really heavy and these trickling little streams you see become raging, roaring torrents that hurtle yellowly through the blackness of the night into the windlashed, turbulent sea. This heavy drizzle of course.” But the spectacle of the Tough Guy with whitebait spawning enthusiastically in the bristles on his chin was too much for us. We knew then the fullness of victory. He whispered, clinging desperately to the hair on the lifesaver’s chest, “Tell ’em I died game! Tell ’em . . . A moment later they began artificial respiration. • * • • Gluttony. Here I read that an Otakeho entomologist has observed a voracious caterpillar gnawing gluttonously at a twig no less than three-sixteenths of an meh thick. Natchah is so crewd ... “I must write a ballad in satiric vein ... a masterpiece of simplicity and vitriolic symbolism.” And he did, poor devil. One imagines the term Royal Worm refers to the chrysalis of the Monarch butterfly. “Bring me a joint,” the Royal Worm quoth, *A noble, juicy dish Swimming in rich amoeba sauce As a Royal Worm would wish “But bring me first a butter fat From the finest Jersey herd And carve it then and garnish it With the tongue of a humming bird “And when the butter fat is served Trot forth the Royal jolate a The noble plate on wftwh is served The roe of choice whitebait "Aye, true, you varlet fleas will bow And stagger ’neath the urn But bring me streptococcus stew Or the Royal Worm will turn “Away, away you jumping fools!” The household fleas here sped Hopping backward for a space Before they turned and fled And then the Royal Worm sat up And rubbed his abdomen In contemplation of a meal Quite large enough for ten. But long before his hunting ants Had speared a butter fat The Royal Worm had chrysalised ’ And well, folks, that was that!