Sense...and Nonsense

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20104, 24 March 1928, Page 13 (Supplement)

Sense...and Nonsense

Random Reflections of a Laughing Philosopher

By

EOBERT MAGILL

’ b’HERE is no reason at all why a woman should suffer from an inferiority complex selecting a tic for a man’s Christmas present. As it is impossible to satisfy him, the only thing to do is to suit yourself. In any case, he will bo behind the tie, ami unable to sec it, whereas you will have to face the thing over the breakfast table for weeks and weeks, providing you can persuade him to wear it. A man instinctively hates new clothing of any sort, and while he jibes at woman because she is a slave to fashion, he is infinitely more so. He would rather be found dead in the correct ridiculous costume worn by all other mon than go on living in anything like a suit of plusfours with a bowler hat. For years and years the outfitters have been trying to force him to wear coloured tics, because they soil much more easily and more of them could be sold, but man insists that whatever colour they may be they shall be of such a dull shade that ten feet away every tie looks the same neutral lint. As it is, the windows are always stocked with deliriously beautiful scraps of silk and poplin in green and yellow and beige, but nobody over sees a man wearing one. If he has a morbid tendency that way he takes it home and dons it behind a locked door. Colours, however, are now said by specialists to affect the ■wearer’s psychology, so that now is your chance to make him behave. Red is stimulating, but if he already eats too much breakfast a little blue will inject the right amount of diffidence into him, and save the housekeeping. But green will make him poetic, while yellow has the same effect as golf. It makes him passionate. Prices vary. You can pay as much as a guinea, which is a swindle when you consider that never more than five shillings worth of it will ever be displayed to an admiring public; or .you can buy them already made up on cardboard, with an attachment to hook them on to a stud, for sixpence. This has the advantage that he can’t put himself out of his misery by pulling the thing too tightly round his neck one morning. At all events, your tie will save his catching cold, because all through the rest of the winter he will be going about with his overcoat buttoned close round his throat BIRTHDAYS. The most important event of last week was that on Tuesday I celebrated my birthday. I woke up and said, “Good heavens, it is possible that I can be this age already?” I had visions of myself being pushed about in a one-seater one-man-power bath-chair. On the other hand, everybody else seemed glad about it. They congratulated me, as though it was really a difficult feat for a man like me to go on living in spite of the life I lead. . I am pleased to say that I can see to read without glasses, al though if there is anything in the glasses I can see better still. 1 can see two of everything, like a girl when she looks into her bottom drawer. I can also walk without assistance on a fine day as far as the breakfast table, and I enjoy good health. I don’t fancy, however, that anybody else enjoys my good health, because when I am feeling particularly healthy I sing while I am shaving, and it rattles the windows.

Asked my opinion of the modern girl, I raise my eyebrows, glance round to see where my wife is, and poke the reporter in the ribs. And I remember perfectly the way the people cheered when the troops marched off to the Great War. I was one of the troops, and it seemed to me that, if the enthusiasm at seeing the back of us could have been moderated a little, it would have shown better taste. I attribute my age to having been born when I was, and my continued good health to (a) using a sheet of Lord’s Blotting paper; (b) read ing six copies of the Daily Phonograph that were sent to me for a week on trial; and (c) gazing at a calendar for 1924, supplied by the local milkman, with three half-starved blue cats on it playing ukuleles. I am aware that those things as explanations of longevity are unusual, and I cannot tell you the scientific reasons for it all, but they are the only things I ever got in my life without paying for them, and I don’t see why I should give any free advertisements to anything else. But there is still time, if some firm likes to send me a limousine, for future generations to blame my protracted existence on to them. The same thing applies to cigars, whisky, golf balls, and other similar patent medicines. I passed the day quietly in the bosom of my family, who put up with it as well as could be expected, because it was my birthday, although they said several times how much more good it would do me to go out and play golf, or do some work, or take a ten-milc walk, or anything that would get me out of the house for the rest of the day. STIRRING THE PUDDING. As a special treat at Christmas time I was allowed to stir the pudding, or to be rather more exact, I was told to leave off arguing and take hold of the spoon. I believe that to stir a Christmas pudding is supposed to bring you a happy month, but stirring one of my wife’s gives me an unhappy quarter of an hour. It’s like digging wet clay with a teaspoon. Being as stiff as this is a sign that it is a good pudding. It is like an after-dinner speech. The less moisture the better the results. Ours is not the sort of pudding that goes wobbly at the knees when turned out of its basin because it is half bread. It is the envy of every woman who has a slice, and says, jealously, “Isn’t it beautiful?” and wishes it would explode and blow our house to pieces. And I can pay my wife’s cooking no better compliment. * To stir our pudding my wife holds the basin while I grab the wooden ladle and stir the puddingy the basin, and my wife all round the kitchen together. After we have apportioned the blame for this, I break the spoon. It is impossible to attempt anything like the rotary motion you would expect, and the only way is to get the thing, in both hands and lever up a portion of the mass on the edge of the basin. I soon discover if I have squashed her thumb, because she mentions it. The only thing that breaks my heart is that when I have finished the job she adds another ingredient, and I have to do it all over again.