EXPRESSIONS

Marlborough Express, Volume LXXVI, Issue 245, 17 October 1942, Page 4

EXPRESSIONS

Topics and Tit-Bits

BY

JAQUES.

Ther-e was some talk rec-ently of a further cut in the petrol ration. Any further cut wouldn't be rationing; it'd be weaning. % :X: # A new description of the name "John Citizen" to fit these warscarred, tax-tormented days: "A long worm that has no turning." & # Joe Louis says that he is too old for a fighter. Perhaps they'll be able to find a place for him in a bomber, then, and let him earn his nickname. "Marlborough Hay. Enjoyed by Cows in U.S.A." Is that great cause for hip-hooray? Fish wouldn't eat it, anyway. Or it wouldn't have got mto Cape Cod bay. • ^ * Minister- for-Railways Semple says that the Government is going t-o run express trains from Picton to Clarence (and presumably back again). A glance at the time able shows that the journey from Picton to the muddy river will o-ccupy no less than four hours for the 70 odd miles, As Mr Churchill would remark if h-e knew: "Some express!" # # The Waikato miners, having won the Battle of New Zealand in such hollow fashion, are now, so we are quite incredibly informed, clamourmg to be sent to the Solomon Islands, there to exercise their iiresistible hypnotic powers on the Japs. But Hon. Webb's very reluctant to let them go. They're wanted in this country, he says, to— er, to— what the dickens is it for, now? — oh, to dig coal. * * # As a man walked out- of the Tea Controller's office the other day with an order worth 11b to provide eight people with two -cups of tea per day for 51 days p-er week — or 376 cups for the calendar month unless you get a differeiit answer— he was heard ro disconsolately remark : "Never before has so much been rationed for so many by so few." ■ "Water with a dash" would seem to be about the right description for the end-of-month brews. # &

A lady named James recently won the first prize in a well-known "consultation. She took as her nom-de-tatt "Home James." We're wondering whether that was a new way of getting a message to an errant spouse. If so, and we w-ere James, we'd station-hop all the way home before we broke our fast, and to Hang with all obstacles, human or hitlerite. Any little domestic tiff'd be worth forgiving and forgetting for £10,000 net (only one t because of rationing) wouldn't it? ^ * # One of these lucky five-day-xyeekers was toiling along behind his lawnmower this morning when Jaques went by, and in response to the Worker's genial inquiry after his health he was heard to give vent to a volley of quite unprintable language which caused the scribe to blush to the roots of his imitation velour. "Oh, deary me! lackaday! naughty!" we reproved him. "Look on the bright side, dear brother! Suppose you had to lather the thing before cutting it!" Of course, he hadn't thought of that, and when last heard he was gaily whistling while he worked. =:;= =;:= « Up to the present such battledress as has been issued to women in the armed forces has been from stocks manufactured for men, but, according to evidence given before the Manpower Industrial Committee in Wellington, the manufacture of battledress for issue to women is shortly to be undertaken in New Zealand. — News item. Are we, then, going to imitate our Russlan Allies and send our womenfolk into battle? Judging from the sounds of warfare proceeding from a residence along the road last night (the head of the family's in the H.G.) there's one woman who seems to manage quite well without any special battle array; but we suppose she'll claim her ration all the same. # # * In some United countries (some others aren't so United, so they don't play ball, but clear off to the races or hang around the pitheads) well they don't give the poliee any more petrol than we would give, say, an Oil Fuei Controller, and sometimes this causes embarrassment, as viz., the other day a covey of -cops was conveying a "kippered" Canadian citizen to the lockup on a charge namely that he was canned, when, half-a-mile from the finishmg- post, -the patrol wagon ran out of "gas."

These versatile Limbs of the Law— policemen are the sailors' closest competitors when it comes to handymannedness — v/ere they nonplussed or kerwock-ensteined? They were not. Seeing an inoffensive-looking wh-eelbaiTow -standing idly by they grabbed that, and the shicker got the surprise of his life xyhen he woke up just before Teaching end-of-s-ection and found out tl^,e type of taxi he was Ratronising. & # m Duty First. They nearly had to stop the war the other Friday owing to the overzealousosity of a U.S. Customs bloke, who, when a party of Canadian froops arrived at the Alaskan frontier on their way to take up defence posts in that American neck-o'-the-woods, held th-em up- and demanded the payment of duty on their equipment, which isn't allowed free into the Land of the Free although soldiers are on giving the password. It isn't 011 record whether the Canadians pai-d up or just rubbed the Customs johnny out with a tommygun, but Congress was hurriedly summoned if it wasn't already sitting which is lik-ely, and it rushed through a special bill which Franklin D. signed before leaving for the Pacifie Slope, as a result of which frontier Customs wallahs are ordered to let members of the United Nations forces who are entering U.S.A. to fight for her and them and us bring their tools of trade along with them without payment of duty. Thus was a tense moment successfully bridged. They have now sent the officious Customs chappie down to the coast, where he can watch the sea-shore for invading Japs He's been given strict orders not to let anv oi them ashore unless they pay dutv on their guns-&--butter So perhaps all will be well that ends well, if it does.