LONDON LIFE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 31, 29 September 1931, Page 4

LONDON LIFE

Geoffre^

- Tebbutt.)

"THE SiLLY SEASON" ENGLAND GOES ON HOLIDAY AND LONDON IS LEFT EMPTY. CASUALLY-TREATED FORTUNES (Specially Written for the "Post"

By

LONDON, August 12. This is Engiand's silly season. It set in on oi; about Augu'st Band Holid'ay, and will contlpue (according to all recorded precedent) . until the end of the month, when thinks will gradually return to norma!. England is on holidays, business appointments are hard to make, "Mr. " is on leave" is the standard reply to telephone calls, and evergreen August subjects such as the propriety of modern beaeh wear and the correct cooking of grouse, spiced with seasonal tragedies, are the staple fare of our popular newspapers. Cabinet Ministers are being photographed playing on the beaches with their grandchildren, the railway companies are rubbing their hands over the heavy traific to the North for the grouse-shooting, and the seasonal light-headedness has turned County cricket into quite a bright entertainment. . - People are falling over themselyes to get ou't of London for a f ew weeks, with the result that lovers of the peace, such as myself, "have the capital relatively to ourselves. " We can at least rest assured of our eorner in the railway-cdrmges and of undisputed possession of our favourite restaurant tables while the p'opulace at large is scrambling and perspiring in the wake of overloaded porters in order to get to the same places for whieh everyone else is bound.

Fortunes in the Air. A f ew da'ys ago, I spent eight hours at Croydon aerodrome waiting for Mr. J. A. Mollison to arrive after the last lap of his record-breaking flight from Australia. Waiting is a wearisome business, but patience, being with ihe a necessity and not a virtue, was not so severely tried at London's air-port as it would have" been at most places, for Croydon is one of the most interesting shows in England, where those with their eyes about may improve their education gratis. Croydon has developed from a group of ramshackle hangars where the wartime Air Force went up and down in machines that would seem almost crazy nowadays to a great airport organised with the precision of a London railway ter'minus. The only things against it are its inaccessibility from the city and its susceptibility to all the fog, frost, and bitter winds that this climate can provide. One of the most interesting things I saw in the long hours that

preceded the appearance of Mr. Mollison's little black Moth out of the haze was the. departure of a load of gold for Paris, part of the drain on the Bank of Engiand's bullion strongrooms that had been going on for some weeks. I am told that anything from a greengrocer's motor-van upwards might bring the gold from the Bank to Croydon, which might be attributed either to a desire that its passage should be inconspicuous, or that modern English hold-up men aim at lower marks than, perhaps, £1,000,000 in bullion. Throwing Money About. I did not see the actual arrival at the aerodrome of this partieular shipment, but I did see it taken out from the aerodrome buildings in an open and unguarded motor-trolley, Which drew up alongside a big airliner stripped of , its cabin fittings. While the three motors of the aeroplane purred and roared into warmth the aerodrome hands seized dozens of neat little boxes — each representing a tidy sum in gold — and hurled them into the cabin and luggage compartment of the machine. Then they went away and left it for a while. Nobody seemed to worry. Gold now goes regularly by air to the Continent, and I am told that the apparently casual treatment of it that I witnessed is iust the normal procedure.

An Anierican acquaintance ruminated upon the scene that would accompany the departure of such a precious cargo in the United States — he had visipns of squads of armed police, and machine-guns nandy in the background. Here at Croydon there was not a policeman in sight. The burly workmen handling the gold to calculate the number of months' or years' work represented in the value of each box they lifted. The" rest of us tried to devise theoretical means of loot. No satisfactory answer came to the queStion of how bullion could be spirited away from a machine flying at 100 m.p.h. between London and Paris, and on which — as on all the "gold specials" — no passengers are allowed. And so we decided to stay poor, bnt honest. Piracy would probably be an overrated pastime on the airway with the 240 m.p.h. flghters of the Royal Air Forcp on the tail of any really enterprising gentleman of air adventure within a few minutes. ' Despised "Threepenny Bits." England despises the humble "three-penny bits." The Englishman who gets one in a handful of chaiige feels about it an annoyance that amounts almost to a suspicion "that hie has been swindled. The ease with which "a threepenny may be lost is about the only concrete argument I have heard advanced against 4 it, iievertheless they are so disliked in England that one might go far months and not see one. Apparently the threepenny pieces of these islands mostly find their way to Scotland, for a well" known author — Beverley Nichols — says in a newspaper article this week " that the p'revalence ' of threepences was one of the things that striick him most on a visit to Edinburgh". " Personally, I see no objection whatever to them. Anyone who is Palled upon to move about much in London has probably found himself at times with a depressing weight of

copper in his pockets. 'Bus conducto'rs seem to revel in handing out twelve ha'ephnies and five pennies as the change of a shilling for a ^enny fare. They will most probably apologise jf they find it necessary to give a threepence to a reluctant passenger, who, apparently, would prefer to add to the copper burdens of his pockets. England is inscrutable and'obdurate in such matters. "Threepenny bits" have definitely been relegated to the sphere of music-hall jokes, in company. with mothers-in-law, the Wigan pier, and Scotsmen, to the possession of wnom Engiand's prejudice has driven a.11 but a minute percentage of a coin that would save mariy pockets holed hy the weight of coppers.