Miscellaneous

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 19 November 1927, Page 8

Miscellaneous

(By Mid-Off”) THE HUMOROUS SIDE OF SPORT. CRITICS IN FANCY MOODS. I wish the weather cock knew it was summer time. A summer time thought: As the days grow longer dresses grow shorter. Heard on the bus: “I see the New Zealand cricketers have brought back a bit of Old England with them—the weather.” Will the courts wear? is the summer time problem for tennis committees. The ladies are asking: "What will we wear?” America is the home for all that's weird and wonderful in sport.—The latest is skating from Oakland to Los Angeles, a distance of 468 miles. The “chainpeen’s” time was 99 hours. I notice that a German girl won the challenge cup for fencing.— A man from Puketapu or thereabouts has written in offering her a year’s engagement on his run, where he has 7000 acres as yet unfenced. • » w • Bookmakers were present at a Yorkshire angling contest recently, when of 760 competitors who fished for four and a-half hours in heavy rain 500 caught nothing. Greyhound racing still has it rivals. “Ah!” remarked the fascinated by-stander. after listening for a time to the moving man who had dropped a grand piano on his foot. “That’s the phrase I was trying to think of yesterday on the links. A man was fined in England recently for taking part in three fights in one evening. It is hardly necessary to point out that he was a member of the Boxers’ Union. A form of tin-hare coursing has arrived in East Melbourne. The local small boys tie a string to a jam tin, and drop the string down the cabletram slot until it engages in the cable. The tin tears off at 20 miles an hour with the dogs in hot pursuit, while their cheering owners lay their last trouser-button on the result. • ■ « It is reported that tin-hare racing is causing a slump in attendances at boxing contests in Sydney. The Stadium authorities are importing a number of overseas boxers with the idea of again bringing the sport into public favour. One of the 40,000 New York longshoremen granted a five-cent-an-hour wage increase will not need the money. He is Gene Tunney, who, although heavy-weight champion of the world, still retains an honorary membership in the local union of which he was a paying member in the days before he enlisted in the marines. Yes, they’re the chaps to tell it to! Believe this or believe it not! Jack Kearns, Mickey Walker’s manager, has made the statement that Mickey Walker and Georges Carpentier will hold a bout in London soon. Charles Cochran is mentioned as the promoter, and he is supposed to be making arrangements for the bout now. The referee, according to Kearns, will be H.R.H. the Prince of Wales.—Whew! What next? • • • Believing, apparently, that whatever John D. Rockefeller touched turned to gold, a man in Norway sent a dollar bill to the aged millionaire with a request that he place it at a bet on Jack Dempsey in his recent fight with Gene Tunney. “Dear Mr. Rockefeller,” the note read. “I am sending you greetings and best wishes from Norway. Would you be so kind as to place a dollar for me that Dempsey will win over Tunney?” Rockefeller, it was learned, returned the money before the fight.

Golf was invented by a Scot whose wife objected to his drinking at home. It is carried on with clubs twisted at the end to make the game complicated. The idea is to take a small ball, knock it out of sight,, spend ten minutes looking for it. ar < then knock it out of sight again. It is hardly a game; it is a tee fight with clubs, a five-mile walk, punctuated with perplexing problems, the sublime stooping to the ridiculous, three acres and a ball, billiards gone to grass.

Have you noticed the peculiar thing about the French tennis team: Borotra, Brugnon and Boussus. In the first place all the names begin with B, and this is not all. A further coincidence is that each name has seven letters. A still further peculiarity is the small number of letters that suffice for the three names. To write these three seven letters, only nine letters are needed, and three of the letters: G. T and A, are only used once. Of the remaining six letters, the B is used three times: the O. four times; the S and R and U, three times each; and the N twice.

There is a young girl in St. Hilda’s College, Dunedin, who is able to jump over her own head; at any rate, she can jump more than her own height, as she demonstrated nt her college sports last week, when, in the junior jump contest, she cleared 4ft Bin, states the Christchurch “Sun.” This young girl's name is P. Mackie, and inquiries are being made in order to ascertain whether or not this fine jump constitutes a New Zealand record for girls. Her performance has become a school topic to such an extent that, should an oxamination in poographv he held within the next week or two the answer to the oncstion “what is flic length Of the Mississinni River’” “B hat is the height of Mount Everest? and “What is the width of the entrance to Otngo Harbour’” wou.d be r uniform one of “four fees eight mcaea.”