A NEGLECTED BAY.

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 31, 6 February 1935, Page 10

A NEGLECTED BAY.

Please, Percy, let me have a say— A plea for poor Kilbirnie Bay, '': Where little children find hot pools, And scamper free from rites and rules, While mothers sew upon the grass And observation ■ buses pass, And beach dogs feel the right to run And dry their hair beneath the sun, And John Hops quite forget to look For sun-tanned bodies in some "nook Where tents are pitched, all hues and styles, And papers blow from many miles, And empty tins and scraps of bread, Post-mortem, cats and hedgehog's dead, With putrid fish and crabs galore Sleep their last sleep along the shore. The bathing sheds are rather bad— Perhaps they're all the council had; - There's scarcely room to change your clothes— They badly need to see a hose. But still each day finds more and mora Picnics "and bathers on that shore. The water's always nice and warm, And kiddies cannot come to harm. That beach could be a perfect bay If all the dirt were cleared away, • Receptacles placed here and there To gather all unwanted fare. ■ There's ample room'for better sheds And I invite our city heads Not to forget Kilbirnie Bay. Who knows? We yet may see the day When they will make an esplanade Along the waterfront, old.pard. , A. WISEMAN, Newtown. * :.* »'■ "AMONG THOSE PRESENT." "Ain't newspapers wonderful?" This inane cliche escaped from a somewhat rustique jeune-fille^-new to a Terrace pension—as she with sophisticated ease surrounded her initial city breakfast of speckled egs and bacon. A male guest 'opposite, with a northtown distinctive hair-cut, but otherwise nodescript, riposted: "Why the adulatory ebullition?" She answered gushingly, that although but newly arrived in the gay city for holiday.,her name— Miss Merino Mangle-Vortzell—was in the society column. "How could the paper know?"-she added naively. '{ The man ventured that it was she, and not the paper, that was wonderful. Her eggy "How come?" (revealing a working knowledge of cinemaese)" brought a sardonic smile to his cadaverous face as he with '• a preliminary "rhetorical cough dramatically recited:' "For twenty years I tried, via the Press, to crash into the nebulously stratosphere commonly called Society, and whilst always hoping for publicity never got it, being invariably included in'the 'etceteras' or 'and others.' I did all the regular stunts, too; concerts, theatres, art exhibitions, flower shows, teas, charity balls, races; gave coal to the poor and old boots to the Smith Family; exhibited at private funerals, getting close to the hearse, and once sat with a compositor in a five-hour beer symposium which r&? suited only in an unbelievable assertion that his paper's roster of publishable names was pre-war. In a last desperate attempt to secure this elusive publicity I committed a minor: pi-irne, in shop-lifting a copy of 'WHO'S WHO,' and was tried by a Magistrate, who, because of no previous convictions, ordered my name to BE SUPPRESSED! That was the last straw, and now I don't try any more,,but stay put, keeping tab on those doings, go-. ings, and comings considered to be of vital importance to the community's daily knowledge. Well, well, perhaps the child is right in her illusion thatnewspapers are wonderful. Anyhow, who.'s afraid of the big black bear?1 * A tragic silence-crashed, and in Inspissated gloom the new entrant inta Society folded her nap. as a scarab and silently stole away. ' ? DONGIOfc 7