EXPRESSIONS

Marlborough Express, Volume LXXVI, Issue 251, 24 October 1942, Page 4

EXPRESSIONS

Topics and Tit-Bits

BY

jaques.

Although we live in an age of sp-eed it takes us just as long to wait as it used to. See queuepon-queues. "A" 'i\' The Wairau River Board has only three permanent workmen left. As the chairman says, it's foolish for too much'to be expected by too many from so few. * x Our American Allies have a happy gift of phrase, as you doubtless know. For instance, can you think of a more apt and at the same time terse command to the careless talker than "Zip your Lip" ? «= * * "Drinking and Dancing. Sequel to Police Visit to Club."— News head • liigs. It couldn't happen here, not in New Zealand it couldn't. Our police are above that sort of thing. =x= * * It was small comfort to the man who'd been arrested and was being tucked away for the night in the cellsto read in a large coloured poster on the door thereof, "Freedom is in peril! Defend it with all your might!" * # «= A city paper reported this week that a husband and wife, the parents of eleven children, had been judicially separated. Nothing was said in the account of the case as to who was given custody of the ration books. * * * "I suppose," remarked the sergeant this morning in his most distantest voice, "that you've got a good excuse for having that black eye?" "No, sarge," replied the afflicted ranker; "if I'd had a good excuse I wouldn't have got the black eye. See?" =£ # With food not so plentiful as of yore, and the dairy industry hara put to it to make both ends of a bovine or a porcine meat, it becomes necessary to refrain from wasting those popular articles of diet, bacon and cheese. It is necessary, that is to say, to keep a Watch on the Rind. # * ■» Jaques and the Wife were out in town for a while last night, and so were several very attractive girls, and, always having been susceptible to beauty, he wasn't always content with orie look (front elevation). After this had gone on for once or twice She turned to him and acidly remarked: "I notice that the rubber shortage hasn't yet- got as far as your neck!" # ^ * A cori'Qsp-ondent s-igning hiipself "Parzy Noker" writes to say that at the Munich Conference of cursed memory the chief participants were the following: Hitler, Mussolini, Chamberlain, Daladier, Benes and Keitel. All right. Now rearrange these names, take the third letter of each, and see if you can find somebody to whom and whose people everyone here should take off his hat as he goes forth on "Labour Day" to enjoy himself right in the middle of the bloodiest war ever perpetrated on a work-shy world. =» -A* ^ This New Zealand. The New Zealand Legation ).n Washington has, so the cableman tells us, issued a booklet entitled "Meet New Zealand," prepared for distribution among members of the American forces in New Zealand. The booklet describes the Dominion's features, charaeteristics and customs, including the traffic syst-em and the liquor laws. Of the traffic system it can, of course, say "Very good on paper," while as for the liquor laws it should

be explained that they came over in the First Four- Ships, and no political party since has had the ghutz to r-easonablise them. We like the next bit— NOT. (We quote) : — "One section particularly interesting to Americans says: 'We don't belong to England. We don's pay taxes to England. Churchill doesn't tell us what to do. Generally speaking, England gets a whole lot more advice from the Dominions than the Dominions get from England. You know what it is like for an old lady when her family grows up.' " Too right, Churchill doesn't tell us what to do; a lot of people rteckon that the miners and the wharfies possess that inestimable privilege. As for the advice that the Dominions deal out to "England," it's probably as indigestible as halfbaked fodder generally is. "We don't belong to 'England,' pursues this precious booklet. But w-e're jolly glad of the shelter of her petticoats when trouble comes. Distinctly not one of Mr Nash's best efforts. Dry Watering. The imposition of almost permanent restrictions on th,e hose-use of water by Blenheim householders is likely to lead to the invention of a special type of seed which will produce a kind of plant (animal, vegetable, or mineral) that will require watering only twice a week. All you'll have to do, when ordering from your seedsman (if he's not a Khaki Marketeer by that time) is to say "Packet o' lettuce, please; Monthurs" (or "Tuefri," or "Wensat" as the case may be) and you'll get the sort that goes with your watering days. If, how-ever, you change your place of residence to another part of the borough, or the watermamiac (no insult intended, but it's a handy term, and succinct) alters the hosing days in your area, then it'll be necessary to notify, in writing (1) your seedsman (if, &c., as above) and (2) your watermainiac, in order that they shall be able so to regulate the flow of (1) seeds and (2) water as to conform to the new balance of power (purchasing, seeds for the planting of). Then there is the question of the once-a-dayers. It's not everybody who can get up with the chaffinch and'go slug-dodging at 5.30 a.m. at the dry end of a hose, just to suit the watermainiac, who seems to have no regard at all for the sanctity of Family Life. These people water only at night, so it will be necessary to breed a seed rationed right down to two fe-eds a week which wouldn't be any good to -the restaurateurs but ~ would be noisily acclaimed by the restriction-fiends who'd for a certainty say: "Two feeds a week, eh? Out 'em down to nothing; they wouldn't dare to die— there's a war on."