CURRENT COMMENT

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

CURRENT COMMENT

OTHER POINTS OF VIEW

(By

M.O.S.)

Speaking on the meat restrictions question at Masterton' recently, Sir William Perry said he hoped the killing of porkers in New Zealand would diminish considerably. Saving their bacon? * # * * - A New Zealand visitor to Australia ■was impressed by the size of everything there. On the other hand, visitors to New Zealand are impressed only by the size of certain things—fish that get away in Lake Taupo, holes in the road and Government departments. * * * * Gunmen in Barcelona have succeeded in a daring coup by disguising themselves in police uniforms. To obviate the possibility of this recurring the authorities are considering issuing uniforms of broad arrows for policemen. # * * * A screw picket, dropping 1000 feet from the tool-box of an aeroplane passing over Christchurch recently, narrowly missed hitting a young girl. Oddly enough the pilot was not an ex-plumber. * # * * When the Tame Poet read of the stray cat menace that is towering over Wellington he wrote a moral tale in his free ■way. It has, he says, the beauty of simplicity essential to modem art. It runs:— A. cat Or two cats ■ Are not only a cat , Or two cats But several Cats. Remember. # * * * Paradise Lost or A Vision of Disaster. (The Port of New Plymouth Keeps it Up, py cprry!) The Dapper Harbour Master sits in his palatial rosewood-panelled suite of offices, toying with a Habana Haban a. Enter a Mere Pilot. Pilot: Excuse me, sir, but the He de France has just signalled. She wants a berth. • • D.H.M.: Shiver me- timbers, mister, you’ll have to get that Strathnaver tub out of the way and let her berth at Moturoa wharf! P.': But the Strathnaver s got a thousand passengers to get through the Customs,, sir! ■ . , D.H.M.: Then tell her to anchor off Fitzroy and get the life-savers to run a line out to her. P.: Line it is, sir (Exit). Enter second mere pilot. 2nd P.: The Ascanius wants to know if she can have the water to sail, sir? D.H.M.: Has the Bremen sailed? 2nd P.: No, sir. D.H.M.: Then tell the skipper of that scow he’ll have to wait. He doesn’t own all the water in this port! 2nd P.: Wait it is, sir. (Exit). / Enter third mere pilot. - 3rd P.: The Gigantic has signalled she wants the doctor for a clearance. D.H.M.: Send her half a dozen. 3rd P.: Half a dozen it is, sir (Exit). Enter office boy. O.B.: Lawks a mussy, sir! We’re done in! D.H.M.: What d’ye mean, ye scaly land lubber? _ - O.B.: There ain’t no harbour, sir. Not no more! D.H.M: How come? O.B.: The Queen Mary's rammed the Breakwater, sir, and there ain’t no Breakwater. ' *#* * . Dabbling in Satanic Powers. The Nitwit, since he gave up being .a politician on account of a fit of vertigo, has'been practising the occult powers of the Tibetans who, according to the leader of a German expedition, create bodily warmth by suggestion. The reason for his enthusiasm he explained as the' recent second flood. The Nightwatchman told, us he had stood all night at the bottom of Brougham Street plumbing the gutters every ten minutes with a lead he had borrowed from his brother the sailor.

“I got so wet,” he sighed pitifully. “It would have given me great comfort to have been able to dry my clothes on me. Who knows?” he added, a manaical jitter in his eye. “I might have dried up the flood.”

On Saturday a glaze of fearful concentration in each eye was the only sign of the Nitwit’s plan. On Sunday we heard someone say as he came out of church, “Quite close inside to-day, don’t you think?” and we saw the Nitwit following them out. On Monday the smiling sub-editor grew suddenly grave and barked out “There’s fire somewhere!” But it was only an old file rapidly charring because, Nitwit was leaning oh it to discuss auto-suggestion.

Tuesday found us frankly uneasy. “It’s been a splendid experiment, Nit,” we Said affectionately patting him on the shoulder with a strip of asbestos. “But haven’t you done enough?” The. Nitwit shrugged and a cloud of smoke went up as he laid his hand on some copy paper. “Not at all, not at all,” he replied nonchalantly. “I want to continue.” -

After a long pause he srfid belligerently, “I suppose you don’t think I could stop if I wanted to?” “Certainly Nitty, old boy, certainly,” we said backing quickly from the fierce heat. But on Wednesday the position grew acute. The Nitwit's mother sent for a doctor, a fireman and us. The Nitwit had cast off all his clothes (they were badly singed and smouldered when he touched them, and was striding naked up and down the concrete garage where he was thought to be less dangerous. The fireman played a gentle spray over him while the doctor advanced through the hissing steam with a thermometer. When it touched the Nitwit’s lips, however, it exploded with a deafening crash. The Nitwit’s mother, who has great faith in old remedies, laid a bread poultice on his forehead but when she lifted it off a few seconds later it was toasted. As they ran off to prepare a bath for him the Nitwit confessed. “I can’t stop it,” he said in a terrified whisper. Suddenly he broke down and cried like a child, but each tear was a little puff of steam.

We tried to seem calm, and taking out a cigarette and the Lighter That Never Works, reflectively turned the flint. There was a blinding flash, a noise like thunder and the room rose up and threw us from wall to wall. Tyres, tools and the Nitwit’s car hurtled after us.

Lying on our back we saw the Nitwit through a long tube that was found to be the exhaust pipe. Black from head to foot he was capering joyfully on the carburetter of his' car. “Cured!” he screamed. “Cured! You must , have broken the habit of concentration.”