MAYFAIR JOTTINGS.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20291, 28 April 1934, Page 23 (Supplement)

MAYFAIR JOTTINGS.

London Flats Equipped With Escalators. VAN LOADS OP LILIES. 5* From Our Loradon Lady Correspond*eut. I hear that, a big block of London flats is now being built to be ready for occupation in 1934, which is equipped with its own. movies. By this I do not mean an okl-fashioned silent cinema installation, hut an up-to-date moving stairway lake the tube escalators. The only practical difference will be that the flat escalators will be switched on and off by residents or visitors as required, a performance which, according to the experts interested, can be carried out without risk of injury or irritation to any intending passengers. One feels that, in time, the need for a pair of legs,' at any rate for the purposes of locomotion, will be entirely obviated in London. The nether limbs will become entirely decorative. A moving stairway will lead one from the flat to a moving pavement outside, and that will in due course deposit one at a bus stop. But the flat movie has perhaps arrived rather late. It might have been even more welcome in the era when bachelors were less sober citizens than nowadays. NO MORE SAUSAGES. When the wind came blowing straight off the Russian Urals the other day and thundered up the garden to the breakfast room door, I telephoned forthwith to a chic suburban emporium. “Please send me half-a-dozen sausages,”, I said, “for draughty doors.” A slight whirring noise came over the wire. In the chilling staccato of a young public school accent, I was informed that no such things were stocked in that establishment. Did I desire a patent draught “exeludah”? I did not. I wanted those jolly red flannel cylinders, plumply stuffed with sawdust that Victorians used to buy, with dignity all unassailed, from hawkers in the street. But apparently the sausage, other than the beef or pork vrfi-iety, has never been heard of by the chic new-style recruits to the furnishing trade of polite suburbia. A pity, for the flannel sausage was extremely effective, if a trifle unsightly. But when the wind is blowing great guns from red Russia, who cares two straws about aesthetics, so long as double pneumonia draughts are kept at bay. SEA KING’S DAUGHTER. Denmark still entertains affectionate remembrances of Queen Alexandra — “the sea king’s daughter from over the waves,” whose marriage to King Edward, when Prince of Wales, occasioned so much enthusiasm amongst the Danes themselves. Their interest in Queen Alexandra was extended also to interest in the doings of her husband, and I hear that a Danish edition is to be published shortly of the life of King Edward. A firm of publishers in Copenhagen is reproducing the volumes in the language of the country. As a graceful gesture, the paper on which this de luxe edition is to be printed, has been ordered from a Scottish firm, for the paper will be of special design and texture. The anticipation is that the hook will prove the “best seller** Demark has known for years past. Queen Alexandra maintained her associations with Denmark up to the very last, though, towards the end, growing infirmity made it necessary for her to abandon her visits to the country. CONSIDER THE LILIES. These frosty mornings, in the haggard hours before the dawn, Covent Garden market is sweet with the scent of lilies. Van loads of lovely lilies of the valley, perfuming all the London air, arrive from busy freight depots, and are borne aloft on the heads of unromantic porters. Formerly, before the tariff, most of these flowers came from abroad. The imported ones now form a small percentage, and cultivators in the south Vnd west of England supply the rest. Our seagirt kingdom must be rapidly developing into an isle of floral harvesting. Lilies of the valley are always in demand at Covent Garden, but more especially at Christmas, and they tell me that nowadays, under artificial conditions, they can be grown in three weeks. So although they toil not* neither do they spin, even lilies of the valley do hustle a bit. BACK TO JUNO. Women are no longer banting. They are letting themselves loose amid the menus in a devoted reaction which should soon restore their figures to the Junoesque of Titian’s immortal fancy. But their former cultivation of the slim silhouette taught them a great deal about food values, and the younger generation of feminine grown-ups are usually sounder judges of comestibles than men. The days of C 3 cake lunches are over. The importance of physical fitness has thoroughly permeated the feminine consciousness. “Men,” declares one big catering authority, “still choose their food on the spur of appetite; women usually do it nowadays on a basis of scientific theory.” A young male artist of my acquaintance, when dining out, invariably leans back quiescently while his feminine vis-a-vis orders the meal. But he butts in on the wine list, for the tradition of woman’s comjflete unknowledgeableness in this direction dies very hard. GAS MASK DRILL. After witnessing anti-gas drill by a platoon of attractive London V.A.D. ladies, my feeling is that every member of this devoted band deserves a D.S.O. with bar. To give the drill full realism, the pretty V.A.D.’s wear "as masks, and even Venus in a gas mask would make the most hideous jungle apo look like a front-row chorus beauty. It says much for the enthusiasm of the V.A.D. movement that it survives the gas mask teat. What London would look like during the business rush hour, with every citizen in a gas mask, is something the imagination boggles at. If gas masks must come the R.A. should appoint a strong committee to improve i£s aesthetic properties. This post-war gas panic has resurrected a Wartime slogan. Fervent instructors assure their squad that not a second’s delav must occur in donning the mask. If a gas attack comes they say, there will '"be only two classes—“the quick and the deadi”