Sense and Nosense

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20110, 31 March 1928, Page 13 (Supplement)

Sense and Nosense

Random Reflections of a Laughing Philosopher

By I

ROBERT MAGILL.

fjpilE Lord Mayor’s Show reminds me of the fact that I have often wanted to be a Lord Mayor. A Lord Mayor can close Temple Bar to the Sovereign, although personally I .should be only too pleased to see him; he can act as wine steward at Coronation banquets, and I expect they think nothing of a half-crown tip on occasions like these; and lastly, he lives on turtle soup. Alas, I could put on tights like Dick Whittington, I could easily carry all my personal belongings in a little pack like his, and I could sit on Highgate Hill until the police moved me on, but I should never hear the bells calling me back. Everything else is in order, but I don’t feel, somehow, that Rudolph, our cat, is the sort of cat for the job.

Y z ou will remember that Dick, having nothing else to venture on a voyage to Morocco, put his cat on board, the faithful animal later on ridding the country of a pest of rats, in consideration of which the Sultan wrote Dick a large cheque.

Now if Morocco was overrun with saucers full of milk, or Suffered from too many platefuls of minced chicken, Riidolph is the very cat they want. He might even condescend to toy with a few tins of salmon if somebody opened them. But he has been far too well brought up to mix with anything as plebeian as a rat. By the way he looks at one you would think he was one variety of Socialist expressing his opinion of another. And so far as I remember, in the pantomime, Dick Whittington’s cat did a little song and dance. Rudolph has a nice voice, and some of his deep notes remind you of Chaliapine, but lie can’t dance for nuts. Besides, I don’t fancy he is a good sailor. He would be always wanting the steward on the voyage. Therefore, I must reluctantly abandon my cherished’ ambition to be the chief magistrate of this great city on which the sun never rises, much as I should like the opportunity of sentencing somebody to seven years for letting off fireworks on the Stock Exchange. OPERA. Talking about mayors and their fattening banquets brings tip the question of how we can make English opera pay. I have never been able to understand why most opera singers are fat, but undoubtedly one great expense the management incur is the underpinning of the stage every now and again in consequence. Meanwhile, everybody pretends to like opera, but won’t pay to go and hoar it.

One trouble may be that there is nothing to do in the intervals except to gaze at the safety curtain. Sometimes the band plays, if the bar is dosed, but the evening would pass much more pleasantly if they would show a few moving pictures to while away the time. In due course, I expect, the films would prove so interesting that they would cut some of the singing and extend the intervals, and eventually it would be all pictures and no opera, but one expects to sacrifice something in the sacred cause of art.

I grant you that you can have an ice in the interval, but operas start so early that, as a rule, you are hungry enough to eat. If they spread the stalls out to make room for some tables, and turned the stage into a kitchen, and let the ban play between courses, they would make so much profit that you would be able to go in free, just as you do at Kettner’s and the Trocadero.

Apart from this, the fact is becoming evident that the public simply will not patronise anything unless it gives them the opportunity to lose money to a bookmaker. Look at this greyhound racing. Half the people there don’t know a greyhound from a grasshopper, and the race is all over, before they have distinguished which is the hare. But they are happy so long as they can give all their cash to some fat man in a red waistcoat, and then walk home. Very well. Often during “Tannhauser” I have wondered whether the tenor or the orchestra would finish first. Why can’t I bet on it, and have a run for my money? While you can imagine the enthusiasm there would be if, just as the soprano was gulping in air before straining at a high C, some turf accountant in the stalls got up and yelled: 4 ‘l’ll lay six to four she don’t reach it.”

OYSTERS. Money, for its own sake, I despise, but I should like to win some at the dogs, if only to be able to indulge for once in as many oysters as I could cat in one go. Providipg, that is, that there are as many oysters as that.

The oyster is the most degenerate of the Lamellibranch molluscs, solely on account of its sedentary habits, but I doubt whether it would be any nicer to eat if it were more energetic and did dumbbell exercises and grew tough muscles. It has two valves, like a wireless set, but it manages to sleep quite well without the aid of a programme from 2LO. And, of course, it is extremely annoyed by anything like a noisy noise. This may seem strange, until you realise that it is alternately male and female, changing its sex several times during the course of a season, so that one month it will be trying to titivate itself up and grow a pearl, whereas the next week or so it will be thinking about growing a beard instead. Naturally, a complex psychology like this requires a lot of analysing, and it needs quiet so that it can concentrate on the problem.

It lives for twenty years, with the kind permission of the Mayor of Colchester, if you asked its age at the end of this time, it would all depend on whether it felt old-mannish or young-.ladyish that day. There are many ways of eating it, but seeing how much it costs, it doesn’t matter how you do it, so long as you make it last. According to the naturalists, its greatest enemy is the dog-whelk, which presumably barks at it and keeps it awake, but in my opinion it is the man who invented chilli vinegar, because that enables you to go on eating oysters long after you’ve had all you could afford. I can think of only one improvement in the oyster. It ought to open with a spring like a cigarette case, and then I shouldn’t ruin so many of the small screwdrivers in my wife’s sewing machine. LOSING MY TICKET. While on the subject of needlework, the other day I had to have a button sewn on the top of my waistcoat. It came off because, when I got to the barrier, I actually gave my ticket to the collector straight away without having to search for it. As a rule, I am so afraid of losing my ticket that I carry it in my hand and look at it all the time I am in the train, although by so doing lam missing all the beauties of the countryside. Sometimes I pass a new hoarding for weeks before I see it. Just as I get to the station I say to myself: “Now, where is that ticket?” And I don’t know*. It is not in my hat, nor in my boots. It is not on the floor. I haven’t eaten it, or, at least, I don’t remember doing so.

I look in my wallet. I open my despatch case. On the platform I try all my pockets again. Meanwhile, lam progressing slowly towards the gate, to save time, and I arrive there partly undressed. The inspector looks pained. It’s men like me who cost him so much in hair restorer. He holds out his hand.

I remember distinctly that I put it into my right-hand waistcoat pocket. It is not there. I turn all my other pockets out. Then I try the right pocket again, although I know by now that it is hopeless. At last, when I am about to give him my name and address and ask him to trust me, I feel idly in that pocket again, and the ticket nearly bites me. It was there all the time. Then, why didn’t I find it? Nobody knows, excepting, perhaps Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and he would say that Jt had immaterialised itself.

I have a small brandy after all that. I ought not to be allowed to travel by train unless somebody would put me in charge of the guard, or I could have my ticket pinned to my coat, as they do with the children in the Fresh Air Fund outings. However, on this particular occasion, I found it first time, as I said. And I nearly got locked up, because it happened to be an old ticket from last week which I didn’t use because on that day a man gavq. 7$ a lift home in his car.