MILESTONES.

Waikato Times, Volume 97, Issue 15272, 23 June 1923, Page 13 (Supplement)

MILESTONES.

(By “Simple Simon.”)

To-day is my ninety-third birthday, but I haven’t had a very nice day for It. This morning, before anyone could wish me “many happy returns,”-I had to get out of a nice warm bed in the country and hurry back to another week of toll. The City on Mondays is a bad place; a very loathsome day is Monday. Next year I am arranging to have my birthday on a Tuesday. I went to the country on Saturday to rest. On Thursday and Friday kind friends had taken me out dancing. My feet were feeling rather tired on Friday morning, very tired on Saturday morning and like two bruised and broken blanc-manges on Sunday morning. It appears they dance in the country on Saturday night. True, they have the decency, thank goodness, to stop on the stroke of midnight, but it only shows what the country is coming to. The good oldfashioned habit of playing patience or reading the papers till nine o'clock and then going to bed is dying out. People who live in the country are: pretty gay dogs nowadays, but unfortunately they don’t begin to feel really gay until the week-end. Then they wake right up. They collect a few towndwellers around them on Saturday morning (Friday night is better still) and give- them no peace till it’s time for these poor work-worn creatures to race away by the early train on Monday. The only way to rest is to stay in the City and spend the Sunday in sleeping and eating. Week-end golf is fatal. Week-end dancing is worse. And week-end dancing after two consecutive nights of continuous foxtrotting. . . .

I say fox-trotting, but really I'm not sure. Not having danced for many centuries, I found it difficult to detect any difference between what the experts do when they one-step and what they do when they fox-trot. It seems to me that dancing is now a decorous revival of the ancient art of walking, so sadly neglected after the advent of the bicycle and the motor car. You collect a partner irr pretty good training and wait for the music to begin. Removing your knapsack and mackintosh, you proceed to take her for a long ramble, taking care to keep to.the right, especially round the corners. If the band strikes up a onestep, you step off with a quick easy swing, and, provided your shoes are comfortable and your partner is a good mover, fond of a%brisk tramp, all should be well. As you stride out together you can point out any objects of interest in your surroundings as you pass—the human gasworks on your left, the wild bull' with the crumpled collar on your right, and so on. After you’ve covered a couple of miles the band will suddenly stop. If xou’re feeling like making for home by the shortest cut, do so. Probably your companion has so enjoyed the exercise that she will applaud so loud.ly that the band will start again. “Come along,” she will say, “we’re in no hurry to get back. Let’s go further on; I wish we’d brought the dogs.”

’ If you listen carefully you will notice a slight change in the music. It is now a shade slower, and the palefaced American gentleman with the loud moaning ' instrument that looks like a cross between a clarionet and a note of interrogation, has altered his style. 'I-Ie has grown more soulful and sedate. Those wailing noises in- [ dicatc the beginning of a fox-trot. To adapt your pace to this slight change of tempo tlie easiest way is to imagine yourself walking uphill on your toes and slow up accordingly. If you continue to step out at a good four miles an hour you will upset your partner’s staying powers and ruin her second wind. When the time again changes and gets positively funereal, it is a sure sign that the Chief Moaner is leading his satellites through the intricacies of a waltz. It is rather difficult to walk comfortably and easily to “one, two, three; one, two, three,” without losing your sense of rhythm —unless, of course, you happen to have a wooden leg or a clubfoot —and the best means of progression is to take your partner’s arm and just stroll, Ignoring the music and your fellowpedestrians altogether. Not being accustomed to much walking, I find that three nights’ dancing, running—l mean walking—well, anyway, three nights of what I’ve been doing—have made me feel very old. From Thursday night to Sunday morning I must have walked two or three hundred miles —sometimes striding along briskly to the lilt of a one-step, sometimes advancing with steps stately and slow like the vicar following his choir up the aisle (fox-trot), sometimes dawdling along arm-in-arm, with time and distance no object (waltz). On Thursday I was a fairly good walker. I covered a lot of ground ajid finished as strongly as could be expected. On Friday I went with a slight limp. And on Saturday I crawled. > I spent Sunday wishing I hadn’t taken up walking again and wondering why I got up for breakfast —or lunch either. And very, vary early on Monday morning, as 1 safi before, I came back home. At' seven o’clock someone came in, pulled up the blinds, and lit the gas. At seven-thirty I rose, looked out of the window, and thought how grey and beastly everything looked. I hate the country at, seven a.m. in June. The trees are all crude and naked, and the sky looks as if the end of the world was coming. It doesn’t come, of course, but breakfast does, at eight o’clock, and you’re late for it, and forget to pack your razor-strop, and your hostess has to wrap it up and :post it after you. Poor woman! she’s accustomed to that postscript to your bread-and-butter letter which arrives on Tuesday morning. “P.S.— I left my razor-strop hanging up on the hook behind the curtain —or Was it on the end of the towel-horse? So sorry to bother you, but would you mind posting it, as my friends prefer me clean-shaven. I also left a pair of gloves. . . .’’ I started with a birthday and then I began to wander off to week-ends and dancing and shaving at dawn. I was going to say all sorts of interesting things about birthdays, but I’ve forgotten what they were. I’m not sure whether this lack of concentration is due to physical exhaustion or old age. I’m afraid it’s old age, because on the second night of my walking tour I stepped right into the •home of Carnival. Prompted by charity, coloured lights, streamers, saxophones, and other stimulants, hundreds of young people met together in fancy dress and walked about all over each other’s feet till three in the morning. The spirit of carnival was everywhere. Maidens arrayed as Columbines and merry peasants threw reels of paper at young men transformed into Harlequins and over-size Chinamen. Others, having no fancy dress and wishing to look funnier still, just came as themselves. It was all very mirthful. You kept the counterfoil of your ticket, and if yours was one of the lucky numbers you won a Jumper or a box of chocolates. One say youth was handed out a dozens

frilly handkerchiefs about the size of a postage stamp. Being unable to exchange them for a motor-bicycle, he had .to give them, like a perfeot gentleman, to his partner. It reminded me of a similar function I went to a few years ago, when the prizes were even more magnificent. ,1 remember it so well, because on neither occasion did I win a prize. I told my partner about it, and asked her if she was there. It seemed only yesterday, but she raised an eyebrow in pained surprise. No, she wasn’t there. She didn’t remember it at all. It was before the Great War, grandfather, and she wasn’t out then. She was too young I A woman may be as old as she feels, but a man is as old as his feet. That’s why I’m ninety-three to-day.