ROUND ABOUT

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 1, Issue 96, 4 December 1939, Page 5

ROUND ABOUT

(By Aitchcl)

, , Seeing "Charley's Aunt" on Thursday night brought to mind an observation I had made some time ag»> on tiie necessity for the writers of humorous dialogue to allow a breath- | ing space after a clever sally. 'Usually, when a character says something good, the audience appreciate it with shrieks and roars and the result is that anything immediately following is drowned. « $ $ » I had made the note to guide me when 1 write such a play. ....It dawned on me, though, on Thursday night, that 1 have the job before me to write anything calculated to make that 'laughing space* necessary. . . w « # * Talking of writing, I was informed once by a publisher that one method of writing a detective story was to get any old people in any old place at all, some of the njos;s possible characters in some of the most out-of-the-way haunts, and then to couple them up in the unravelling of the story. '■?, a m •" sb ® I tried it once. I forget all the characters I had in the yarn but I remember that I had a farmer, a Japanese egg-sex detecting expert, and the sister of an employee in a Freezing Works. It made interesting reading but it was not for publication. 4! SR I saw a six-pound bag'of sugar lying on the pavement about half-way between the Union Bank and the BEACON Office. The bag was split and most of the contents decorated the asphalt. The same evening, iii practically the same place,. I observed another ruined parcel. The paper was ripped and the two bottles were broken.. . .yes, and of course the beer had found its way to the gutter. rnmmm Thinking along the lines of the quoted method of writing detective fiction, I reasoned thus: Wife of a chappie goes shopping. Buys the ration of, sugar. Has an accident. Week's sugar supply gone by the board. Informs husband at lunch-

time. Hubbv broods over it all afternoon. Hubby adjourns to pub at 5 p.m. and leaving at fi p.m., takes a couple of snifters to see the evening out. Suddenly the strain of the constant brooding over the loss of the sugar tells, he loses control over him self, raises his parcel on high, and with an oath, flings it to the ground 5S « That was the case in a nutshell.Only I overheard two women talking the next day. One said: "How did it happen?" Replied the other: "Oh, Ronnie says that the bag lof potatoes started to slip out of his hand and making an effort to obtain a firmer grip, he dropped the sugar. T was annoyed, of course, but perhaiDS he did have too much to carry. "Yes, he's not a big boy, is he?'* "No, he is only ten years old." « * « * Meet Claude. a: S ® e I saw a man. He had a spade in his hand. He started to dig. I watched. After an hour I still watch ed. Two hours later I still watched but I had to take my stance on the edge of the huge pit to see the man.

I went for a walk and was away for another hcur. The man still dug. Then he looked up and asked me to pass a ladder down to him.. Ever helpful, I passed the ladder and the man came up. "Hallo," I said. "Hallo," he answered. "Sinking a shaft?" I ventured. "No." I.looked up and saw the eaves of the house. I protested., "You can't put a power-pole in here." "It isn't a power-pole," he said. I was pretty sure it was something big so I suggested, "New drainage system?" "No, it isn't a neAv drainage system." "I've finished guessing," I said. "What have you dug this crater for?" "Oh, yes, I see what you mean. All these hours, and all that sort of thing. H'm, well, I'll let you into the secret." Was T interested? "Yes," he said, "to tell you the truth it's the wife!" I stared at him. My teeth chattered. Was I face to face with a murderer? Was the body of his wife even now lying in that house....! "Your wife?" I stammered. "Yes," he said, and it seemed to me that his voice was broken. More, he appeared to have aged suddenly; his .'face grown haggard, (Continued foot previous column)