BREEZES FROM THE CAPITAL REFLECTIONS BY THE WAY

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 4, Issue 3, 1 September 1925, Page 18

BREEZES FROM THE CAPITAL REFLECTIONS BY THE WAY

Q AY, Bos! Uncle Sam has dropped anchor in I’il o’ Wellington Harbour, along with about twelve thousand chips of the old block. So, taking everything into consideration, you’ll excuse mewon’t youif every now and again I kinder forget myself and lapse into Amurrican? After all, everybody’s doing it! But seriously speaking, if nowadays, just by bad luck as it were, a husband happens to run across his wife in the street, he just shifts his cigarette from one corner of his mouth to the other, lifts his hat and his left eyebrow and remarks “Wal, stranger For the present, at least, those who are usually nearest and, in frequent instances, dearest to us, must be content to remain—wal, strangers. Who, may I ask, is going to sit peaceably at home, warming tea, toast and carpet slippers, when she can be dancing her toes (and talking her tongue) off with gentlemen adventurers whose lives have been (to our unsophisticated minds at least) Zaire .Grey novels come true? Besides, it’s not often we get the chance to forget that we’re sober and respectable old married women, whose lot in life it is (or ought to be) to stand on our dignities, sit in a corner, and, if we feel that we really must indulge in a little excitement, to go to mothers’ meetings and knit chest comforters for curates. Year after year (it seems even longer than that, doesn’t it?) we have patiently ironed the frocks, sewed on the buttons and fastened the silver dancing slippers of our awfully grown-up little daughters, and then, the bustle and excitement of preparation over, we have retired to our kitchens, washed up the dishes, and waited submissively and in silence for our

lords and masters to finish reading the evening paper. We have never, even in our most irresponsible moments, dreamed of accompanying our offspring to their dances and other places of entertainment, because “Oh mother, chaperones are so old-fash-ioned!” But now, just for this once, we have astonished everyone, including ourselves, by kicking over the traces and having the time of our sober, well-ordered and enormously respectable lives. We find, as a general thing, that the boys from the Fleet are perfectly willing to be entertained by (and to entertain) anyone who cares to make the effort; and I can tell you that some of them have the most thrilling tales of adventure to tell. One of them (and he such a quiet-spoken young man, too!) is, according to his own account, the sole proprietor of a treacle mine on a desert island in the exact middle of the Pacific Ocean. He works it on a co-operative basis with a tribe of cannibals. Think of that the next time you have molasses on your bread and butter! Another is the proud possessor of a costume consisting entirely of kangaroo feathers, which he obtained by bribery and corruption from an Australian aboriginee. I dared him to walk down Lambton Quay thus araryed, but he replied that the Fleet has strict orders to be kind to the police. STALKING of the police; It has taken the happy-go-lucky friendliness of the sailor-boys from the U.S.A. to persuade our usually chill and unapproachable police force that boys, taking them all round, will be boys, and that, after all, it would be a sad old world if they weren’t. As a general rule, Wellington puts on

its night-cap, turns out its light and tucks itself up, like a good Christian, at ten o’clock sharp; but in these altogether unprecedented times one can, if one is careful to provide oneself with an armed escort, walk through the streets at the very witching hour of night, and, even in the most uninspiring weather, come upon bands of strayed revellers playing “Poor Sally is a Weeping” round lamp-posts, while singing, at one and the same time “We Won’t go Home till Morning.” As a general thing, you may take it from me that they don’t. Of course, coming as they do from a country where everything, including human nature, is strictly prohibited, Uncle Sam’s sailors steer a very straight course past such gathering places of the unregenerate as saloons. But it seems to me that they must have discovered some new, harmless and yet highly tonic beverageprobably a superior brand of ginger-pop while bearing no relation whatever to that dead and disreputable scoundrel, John Barleycorn, possesses, nevertheless, some of the late —ex—exhilarating properties. Anyhow, the other night, or, to be strictly truthful, the other morning, as I was returning in the wee sma’ hours from a dance, I saw at least twenty of them doing something that looked like a cakewalk down Lambton Quay, and singing in loud, hearty and unanimous voices “We won’t go back till it’s over, over there!” Do you think that they could possibly have been referring to the reign of Prohibiten? Anyhow, there you have it. Something in the present regime of the United States is displeasing to their lordships—“and they won’t go back till it’s over, over there.”

(N.B. —On second thoughts, I have decided that they probably referred to the heat-wave at present prevailing in New Yark. After all, to ask a man to be hot and dry at one and the same time is—well, I mean to say, most people would prefer to postpone it, wouldnt’ they, now? DY the way, just before we leave ces chcrs Amurricans, I wonder, don’t you, what effect this peaceful invasion will have upon the fashions of the community? Here’s summer a’comin’ in— slow degrees, to be sureand here, on the other hand, are all the little dressmakers and milliners just tearing their —no, I forgot; they haven’t any, poor dearswell, just scratching the shingles in the vain effort to think out something altogether new and absolutely outrageous for Milady to spring on her unsuspecting family. Well, don’t you think that a sailorlike little costume, all in white and lacquer red, topped by a feminine version of those jaunty pork pie caps would be just exactly the very thing ? We could have the long tunics—while, with sailor collar and fluttering red bows—and the little red cap perched impudently on the extreme top of our fair and fluffy hair. I venture to say that thus arrayed we’d fall in love with our new selves at first sight. Besides, think of all the pleasant memories that we’d awaken in each other’s hearts. I suppose, there being such people as husbands somewhere about the premises, that we’d have to refrain from making those lovely bell-bottomed trousers a feature of our touts ensemble —though I’m sure that they’d go

nicely with the fashionable slim silhouettes which we’ve gone to so much trouble and expense to obtain.

r | 'HAT reminds me. Every woman is the possessor of at least ninehundred and ninety-nine absolutely infallible recipes guaranteed to bring slimness to the lady built, as the saying goes, more for comfort than for speed. There are Turkish baths where one simply melts oneself down, like a tallow candle. There is the rubber corset abomination. There are special bath salts, special exercises, and, as a last resource, Coueism. Then there is dieting. Everyone inclined to “cosiness” is paving the way for the delicious little summertime frocks on which she intends to waste her husband’s hard-earned cash by one or another of these infallible remedies. We gather together in restaurants, at dance halls and even in our own homes, and tell each other, with bated breath, just how many pounds we have lost during the past week. One lady of my acquaintance is taking into her system enormous quantities of mashed potatoes and milk —absolutely nothing else—and she firmly believes, poor dear, that if she sticks to her guns—l mean to her mashed potatoes—long enough, she will be able to indulge in one of those natty little beach-and-bathing-suits which she has coveted for years. Another—an extremely dignified personage, I can tell you—grovels on the floor every morning before breakfast, to the mart’al strains of “It Ain’t Gonna Rain No More,” as expounded by a phonograph. And the worst of it is, she likes it. I myself, being far from immune to the little weaknesses of my sex, am subsisting on lettuce leaves and raw—yes, positively raw —carrots and turnips (just like a rabbit) in the confident expectation that my total abstinence from everything nice (yes, even choclits). will, in time, reward me with a figure like a girl’s and a peach-blos-som complexion. So far I haven’t noticed any indications of the peachblossom complexion, but every now and again some acidulated acquaintance says to me "You’re getting frightfully scraggy, dear. So many women go to seed about . . .” and thereupon she mentions an age which is five years more than my real one, and twenty years more than I’d have other people believe. Still, even comments like that brighten one up a little. They make one feel, don’t you know, that the slim silhouette is more or less on the way.'

T SUPPOSE, in order to preserve A my reputation, that I’ll really have to say something about Wellington proper (having talked for hours about Wellington improper) before this epistle draws nigh unto its appointed. end. Wellington, my dears, is going some. (Only unreasonable people like “Pater Familias” and “Pro Bono Publico” desire to know anything about its ultimate destination). Anyhow, we have a Winter Show all to ourselves, and, what is more, we are actually making it pay. Sign of the times, isn’t it? Ten years ago we might possibly have indulged

in an exhibiton, or, say, a bazaar; but we would have insisted on having a heavy debit balance to show after everything but the settling up of the accounts was over. Profits were considered vulgar. And just look at us now! But I suppose, just for education’s sake, that I should take you on a personally conducted tour of this Show. Well, you drive to the Show buildings in a taxi (threepence return, please mum, thank you, mum) pay your just and lawful toll to the keeper of the door, and firmly resist the importunities of several thousand hoop-la men. Having entered in at the strait gate, you proceed to walk. for miles, until, just as you are about to collapse from sheer fatigue, you come upon a sign reading “Afternoon Tea.” Thereupon you devoutly thank' your stars, not to mention your garters, and, under the influence of a gallon of piping hot tea, slowly regain some portion of your physical, mental and moral stamina. Talking of tonic beverages : Just by the door, there is a little stall piled high with fat black bottles of New Zealand home-made wine, surrounded by painted grapes that would have made Bacchus water at the mouth. Over the stall is a placard inviting wayfarers to enter in and “sample our wine.” You look at this dubiously, and are about to pass on, when your husband, who has been trailing along, parcel-laden, in your wake—a most unwilling beast of burstands still, and, like Balaam’s ass, refuses to budge for anyone. Yielding to his prayer, you glance enquiringly at the man behind the stall a magnificent-looking individual, well over six feet tall, and with brown eyes that have come from Italy, the land of grapes , and sunshine. He surveys you from your bobbed hair to your, short skirt, gravely shakes his head and say “I am sorry, Madame, but nobody under twenty-one is admitted.” At which you smile, and pass on, while your husband passes altogether impolite remarks not too deep under his breath. Later on in your line of march you find that the aforementioned husband has suddenly and unaccountably disappeared. But vengeance is yours. You proceed, the cat being away, to buy everything that you know he hadn’t the faintest intention of affording, and charge it up?

YYUTSIDE in the sunshine, you go-round, there -to indulge in the undignified delight' of a race through the air on one of those prancing wooden horses which were the Gloamings of your little-girlhood. Just at the very moment when your fiery 1 steed, . bucking, rearing and snorting, comes down to earth, your husband emerges from the doorway and regards you with a pained and scandalised sort of expression. Whereupon you smile sweetly, straighten your hat, which has fallen over your left eye, and, with an air of child-like simplicity, offer him a peppermint. He then decides that it’s just about time you went home—proper place for a woman, anyway.