WHAT KNOTS

What Knots, Volume 3, Issue 2, 10 December 1945, Page 1

WHAT KNOTS

HMNZUS - MAUM&ANUI

VOLUME 3>-Ko. 2.

MONDAY, 1 0 DECEMBER, 1 945 EDITORIAL

VOYAGE XVII

The week has been spent in Australian waters and Australian waters always . remind us of Australian hats in that they tilt a lot and tend to be rough. There has been sickness? alas. Some have taken their sickness to the R. BD. Room. Others have taken it to the deck above and left it there. More important is the edict of the quartermaster that the ship is full and nothing more can be bought*, .otherwise No 2 Hold will develop a hernia. We' are a bit critical of this and inclined to talk about our rights. Mas the "war been fought in Spain? Is this an insidious communist attempt to strangle 'trade with Britain? In most of the world we can’t buy because the vendors haven’t got enough. Here we Can?-t: buy. either because no 2 Mold has. too much. What we want is a fire' in the hold or free trade. In the meanwhile there are reports that some gentlemen have boon driven to coming back from leave at Fremantle wearing as many as three pairs of silk stockings. One- such expressed the greatest astonishment on finding the stockings the next day and declared that he had the clearest recollection of having put them on someone r else ’s legs. Innumerable- letters have reached us this week; They are nothing in the nature of a 'fan mail because they are full of complaints; Says someone from M ’’The speed of the ship 1 is excessive. Why should I be butchered with seasickness to make a holiday of the English winter?” A lady from K informs us that before she left London for Hong Kong she put .the aspidistra in the basement and probably no one has watered it since and would the captain get a move on. An indignant letter has reached us from B complaining about sailors being keelhauled during boat drill and from the signature we deduce that the author must be an amputee.■ And there is much ado about this inter-ward competition. One man says he wouldn’t mind being a. ward representative if he got promoted and a ward representative says all the chaps in his ward want him demoted, at once. Another writes in to say he has a juggling trick he can do and is it worth any points and his cobber is an authority on ski-ing and would that be any use? Still another refuses to play unless he gets a handicap because he has played housie all his life and he has never won anything yet and has never met anyone who has. A man from D protests against a competition being held for the biggest vaccination rash as the men who were done with the blunt needle have an advantage. , All this, of course will have its fulfilment in the future. In the meanwhile we are at sea again and the ports that have the beer are behind us. With a sense of relief we would even attempt a very mild modification of Kipling There’s a. whisper down the ■field where the year has shot her yield And the ricks stand, grey to the sun. Saying ’’Over,, then, come over, for the bee has left the clover , And your. English summer’s done” So the Lord : knows what we will find, dear Love, and. the deuce knows what we will do . But we’re out once more on the same trail, our own trail, the out trail We’re down, hull down, on the old trail, the trail that is ever new. . oOb