DOMESTIC DISCORD

Waikato Independent, Volume XXXI, Issue 2781, 28 November 1931, Page 4 (Supplement)

DOMESTIC DISCORD

WHEN UNCLE HANGS A PICTURE. You never saw such a commotion up and down a house, in all your life, as when my Uncle Podger undertook to do a job. A picture would have come home from the frame maker’s, and be standing in the dining-room, waiting to be put up; and Aunt Podger would ask what was to be done with it, and Uncle Podger would reply:— “ Oh, you leave that to me. Don’t you, any of you, worry yourselves about that. I’ll do all that.” And then he would take off his coat and begin. He would send the girl out for sixpen-’orth of nails, and then one of the boys after her to tell her what size to get, and from that he would gradually work down and start the whole house.

“ Now, you go and get me the ham mer, Will,” he would shout; ana you bring me the rule, Tom; and I shall want the stepladder, and I had better have a kitchen chair, too; and, Jim, you run round to Mr Goggles and tell him, * Pa’s kind regards, and hopes his leg is better, and will he lend him his spirit level ? ’ And don’t you go, Martha, because I sha’l want somebody to hold me the light; and when the girl comes back she must go out again for a picture cord; and, Tom—where’s Tom ?—Tom, you come here. [ shall want you to hand me up the picture.” And then he would lift up the picture, and drop it, and it would come out of the frame, and he would try to save the glass, and cut himself; and then he would spring l’ound the room, looking for his handkerchief. He could not find it because it was in the pocket ,of the coat he had taken off, and he did not know where he had put the coat, and all the househo’d had to look for it, while he would dance round and hinder them.

“ Doesn’t anybody in the whole house know where my coat is ? J never came across such a set in all my life—upofi my word I haven’t. Six of you ! and you can’t find a coat that I put down not five minutes ago ! Well of all the—”

Then he’d get up and find that he had been sitting on the coat, and would call out:

“ Oh. you can give it up 1 I’ve found it myself, now. Might as well ask the cat to find anything as expect you people to find it.” And when half an hour had been spent in tying up his finger, and a new glass had been got, and the tools, ladder, chair, and candle had been brought, he would have another go, the whole family, including the girl and the charwoman, standing round in a semi-circle ready to help. Two people would hold the chair, and a third help him up on it, and hold him there, and a fourth would hand him the nail, and a fifth the hammer and he would take hold of the nail and drop it. And we would all have to go down on our knees and grovel for it, while he would stand on the chair, and grunt, and want to know if* he was to be kept there all evening. The nail would be found at last, but by that time he would have lost the hammer.

“ Where’s the hammer ? did Ido with the hammer ? Great heavens ! Seven of you gaping round, and you don’t know what I did with the hammer.”

We would find the hammer for him, and then he would have lost sight of the mark he had made on the wall where the nail was to go in, and each of us had to get up on the chair beside him and see if we could find it; and we would each discover it in a different place; and he would call us all fools. And he would take the ru’e and re-measure and find that he wanted half thirty-one and , three-eighths inches from the corner, and would try to work it out in his head, and go mad. And.we would all try it in our own heads, and all arrive at different results and sneer at each other. And in the genei’al row the original number would be forgotten, and Uncle Podger would measure it again. This time he would use a piece of string. At last he would get the spot fixed again, and put the point of the nail on it with his left hand, and take the hammer in his' right hand. And with the first blow he would hit his thumb and drop the hammer with a yell on somebody’s toes. “ Oh, you women make such a fuss over everything ! ” Uncle Podger would say. “ Why, I like doing a little thing like this.” And then he would have another try, and at the second b’ow the nail would go clean

through the plaster. Then we had to find the nail and string again, and a new hole had to be made; and, about midnight, the picture would be up, very crooked and insecure, and everybody dead-beat and wretched—except Uncle Podger . “ There you are ! ” he would say, stepping heavily off the chair on to the charwoman’s corns, and surveying the mess he had made with evident pride. “Why, some people would have had a man in to do a little job like that! ”