RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 84, 3 January 1935, Page 6

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events (By Kickshaws.) Recovery, it is declared, is in the air. The problem is to get it down to earth. Mira Ceti, the celebrated star, is stated to be now visible. Yes, but at which cinema? A writer declares that a woman should run her home by rule of thumb. This merely applies to the home a method commonly applied to the husband. “Will you kindly inform me, through your much esteemed column, the respective population of the first twelve \ largest populated cities in tire world,” asks “Sebrof.” [Here they are in round numbers:— London, S,200,000; New York, 7,000,000; Berlin, 4,000,000; Chicago, 3,400,000; Shanghai, 3,200,000; Paris, 2,900,000; Osaka, 2,800,000; Moscow, 2,800,000; Leningrad, 2,800,000; Tokio, 2.300,000; Buenos Aires, 2,100,000; Philadelphia, 2,000,000.]

All this publicity that has been given to an aged shepherd of the Cotswoids, England, who has lived all his life in the same little village, and has never seen the sea, might lead one to assume that he bad done something out of the ordinary. The fact is that there are many people like him even to-day. A motorist in North Canterbury, who asked an elderly man the way to the sea, was informed by the man that he had never seen the sea all his life, although he had lived on a sheep station which actually fronted the sea. One could cap this with the case of John Hogan, of Waterford, Ireland. He is now 102 years old. All through the complete century of his life he has never slept for one night away from the house in which he was born. Miss Sarah Hannah, who lived at Singleton, recently died at the-age of 70 years. She had never left her own village all her life, and bad never seen a city or tlie sea. It will be seen, therefore, that despite this modern mad desire to get somewhere else as quickly as possible. there are still one or two quite sane people left.

Perhaps the record lor stay-at-homes is held by a man named Philip Baker aged 80 years who lives in West Sussex at-E<lburton. This little Downland village has a population of 100 souls and is 'but 50 miles from London. Sussex admittedly has now been discovered by stockbrokers and other week-end enthusiasts from the city, but Mr. Baker has never discovered London. In fact he has never been out of Sussex. He has never travelled more than 20 miles from his own village, never been in a railway train, only once in an omnibus, has worked on the same job for 60 years and has never been ill. Most of us have been nearly everywhere but few have never been ill. It is by no means the poorer type of individual who has spent a lifetime on the land who boasts this negative type of record. Judge Crawford is not a farm labourer. He is quite intelligent and shrewd. Yet he has never been in a cinema, never driven a motor-car, ridden a motor-cycle, been to a fair or had a ride on a roundabout. Maybe there are some in New Zealand who can beat these records. It would be intriguing to hear about them.

The real truth about the power we have to-day of getting rapidly from one place to another is that it has denied as much as it has given. We can dash to Rotorua and back for the Christmas holidays, we can rush to Taupo, catch a trout, aid be back home in Wellington in time to cook it. We can scamper up mountains, scuttle across the sky, and convert ourselves into projectiles in all manner of ways. But what we gain in speed we lose in experience. It is impossible'to absorb the atmosphere of a place passed at sixty miles an s hour. The aeroplane unfolds an endless map beneath us, but we are as far away from those who live down below as if they were on another planet. Speed has made us superficial. In the old days when one walked or rode, it was impossible not to discover something new about the places visited and the people who lived there. We leap about the countryside like grasshoppers, we create a din and a dust and a smell. But we only discover that one place is very like another because we have no time to delve deeper. This perhaps accounts for the desire to get somewhere else in search of a something that for ever eludes us because it is too slow.

If it be correct that the'fashions for 1935 are much the same as the fashions for 1910 it is not Surprising. There is little that is new in the world and nothing that is new in fashions. All clothes have been worn before. There is nothing that is entirely original. Someone somewhere has worn the same dress before, be it in China 4000 years ago, or Egypt before the West was civilised. There was a time indeed when the skirt was worn by menfolk and women wore trousers. That was long ago. There came a lime i,n the fifties of last century when It looked as th ough bloomers would cause a ieversion to the original order. But men only wear skirts to-day when they wish to be impressive. They wear skirts on official occasions such as in the law courts, or in church. This has not stopped women wearing trousers. They wear trousers to-day as frequently as the skirt. Long ago in the days of the ancient Egyptians fashion experts tell us that women were being just as modern.

{f it be true that fashions move in cycles, iu due course there will be a return to the wasp waist, tight lacing, balloon sleeves, and skirts that sweep the ground so efficiently vacuum cleaners will be a drug on the market. The trouble is that, fashions are always ushered iu with smooth words which mean little but seem to prove bp' v vital is the coming fashion to the health and beauty of the individual who adopts it. When swathed up necks were introduced women were told that “not a word can be said against the charming collarettes." Even tight lacing bad its advocates. It was pointed out that women had been given a waist by Nature which it was her duty to preserve. Moreover, the vital organs of the body needed support. How could a woman have an upright carriage otherwise than by tight lacing. “A truly graceful outline with a small waist and defined hips are the rewards of tight lacing which armours the body against colds'.” It was even declared that tight lacing “improved the game of tennis In which a ladylike deportment should be preserved and even more support given to the figure.”