FROM A CLUBMAN’S CHAIR

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20669, 6 March 1937, Page 5

FROM A CLUBMAN’S CHAIR

INFLUENZA FOR ALL TASTES TALE OF UNWANTED TANKS Specially written for “ The Timaru Herald. '* by Charles Martini LONDON, January 21.

The influenza epidemic which is sweeping England is the pleasantest kind of scourge. Those who get it don’t suffer much, and those who escape have their vanity flattered every day by the doctors and medical writers. The heroes of the hour (in their own eye£) are those who “carry on” in spite of a dose of “flu.” And as the variety now prevalent is so mild that anyone with a cold or a headache can fancy himself afflicted, there are hundreds of heroes everywhere one goes. A Chance to be Lazy But the doctors are warning them not to “carry on,” lest they infect their fellows. “Stop at home” is the universal medical advice. That pleases the not-so-heroic, for it gives them an admirable chance to spend a few lazy days by the fireside. What with the germ-scattering heroes and the obedient stay-at-homes, many business firms and public organisations are finding it hard to get their work done. A newspaper friend of mine rang up the London Fire Brigade to ask how many firemen were down with influenza. “I don't think we had better say,” was the reply, “people might think we had not enough men to deal with fires.”

Good Value in Clubs A man I met the other evening was enthusiastic in praise of the Royal Empire Society’s new headquarters. He declared that it was the best value in clubs to be found in the whole of London. As far as the visitor is concerned the R.E.S. seems to be neither a society nor a club, but a first-class luxurious hotel. Prices are ridiculously low. Lunch in the palatial dining-room costs only half-a-crown—no more than one would pay in a second-rate teashop.

Bedroom Luxury If you want to make the Royal Empire Society your headquarters during a stay in London, you can have a beautifully furnished bedroom with its own bathroom for 10/6 a night. Membership of the R.E.S. entitling you to all these bargain-price amenities, i costs only three guineas a year. That is less than half as much as the subscription to the cheapest of ordinary London clubs. Coronation Refreshment About half a million pounds worth of wine, I hear, is stored at the London Docks. Most of it will be drunk during the Coronation festivities and the gay London season which is to follow. It is not so much the quantity of the wine there as the :apidity with which it is being taken away which impresses the Port of London officials. Men who have spent a lifetime at the Docks cannot remember such a boom in wine. Generally cargoes of wine arriving in London go down into the vaults for long months of storage. But during the past few weeks three-quarters of the consignments have been carted off at once for bottling. A Sherry Shortage? Incidentally, wine merchants are beginning to talk seriously of a sherry shortage. When the Spanish trouble broke out shipments ceased and there was an immediate scare about a sherry famine. The scare was baseless then, for English merchants had ample supplies on hand. But few people expected the civil war to drag on for so long; and now. with the Coronation demand close at hand, there really is a prospect of shortage and high prices. A few years ago that would have caused few qualms, for England drank very little sherry. But now Spain’s most famous wine has partially ousted the cocktail from popularity as the favourite beforedinner drink. Where Are the Tanks? Someone recently remarked on the disappearance of many of the war memorial tanks you used to see in public squares and on village greens all over England; and a London evening newspaper has had the bright idea of making a census of the vanished trophies. The result shows that tanks are definitely unpopular nowadays. Dozens of them have been sold as scrap-iron. Some fetched no more than £7 or £8; the peak price was £34. Southport residents declared their tank “hideous and unsightly,” and sold it to a Sheffield firm to be turned into stainless steel knives. The tank in a Kent village had its fate sealed when some one discovered that it had never seen war service at all, and so was not even a trophy. This tank also went to the scrap-merchant.

Cost of Paint One reason that tanks have gone out of favour is that they need such a lot of painting. War Office instructions, when the tanks were presented, were that they should be painted once a year. This cost about £2O a time; and after a few years most town councils got tired of voting the money.

Pointing the Moral “Post Early in the Day” has long been one of the British Post Office’s slogans. But apparently people take little notice of it; so the Postmaster General has now rented a large shop window in the City of London to illustrate graphically the need for early mailing. The window is crammed with an immense pile of miniature letters, each envelope a little more than an inch long. There are 19 million of them—which is the number of letters actually posted in the London area every week. The idea is to give passers-by some idea of the Post Office’s immense task. There is a notice in the window telling the public how much lighter they could make that task by posting earlier. For sixty per cent, of these 19 million letters pour into the pillar-boxes after four o’clock each day.