LONDON LIFE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 108, 29 December 1931, Page 7

LONDON LIFE

Geoffrey Tebbutt)

A rare blend PAGEANTRY AND CHEESE THE URGE TO TRAVEL

(Speeially Written for the "Post"

by

LONDON, November 18. . Pageantry and prosaic commerce rarely blend successfully, but London's new Lord Mayor, Sir Maurice Jenks, to-day achieved a happy mixture of the picturesque with the unromantic — in the noble causes "of Empire and economy. New Zealand cheese was the fortunate recipient of the Lord Mayor's attention, and in London the Lord Mayor is more than an elaborate figurehead. Trumpeters of the Royal Horse Guards gave the muddy and forbidding Tooley Street a fleeting touch of colour, and the Lord Mayor, driving with his sheriffs in a coach-and-four, with bewigged and dash- j ing coachmen, brightened'the gloomy j November scene of tall warehouses i under a weeping November sky. ! After the Lord Mayor had appropriately welcomed the Somerset's shipment of New Zealand cheese, we sat down to what our hosts had designated "an economy lunch." Perhaps it was economical, as public lunches in London go, but if eeon- , omy in eating never reduces orie below some preliminary .dishes, roast mutton and several vegetables, some etceteras, cheese, and rare good beer from tankards, one may count luxury well lost! I felt quite virtuous at economising under those conditions. When it was all digesting nicely, a learned professor, Sir Leonard Hill, made a speech in which he urged that most of the ills of civilisation were due to eating too much meat and other heavy fopds, and not j enough of other, and less interesting, ; dishes. As, however, he stressed the value.of butter and cheese, all good New Zealanders present (even those who secretly prefer large and juic$r J steaks), forgave him. J Lured From London So artful in advertising have the shipping, railway and air companies i and the travel agencies become that it is a wonder London is populated at all during the winter by people with money to spare. The shipping columns and the display windows of the travel companies are very alluring. One is invited to winter in Australia or New Zealand, tantalised by photographs of passengers on luxury liners scantily clad under sunny skies and on motionless seas, by posters showing the Indian air mail skimming over Oriental landscapes, by models of great steam ers idling under tropie moons. And if one is poor and wise, one goes home and performs feats of financial jugglery with the pious hope of meeting a 5/- in the & income-tax ' due on January 1. I feel sure that it is the income-tax assessor who keeps more people in London in the winter than any other man. Buying British These are depressing times, but for those who see as their outcome a self-contained British Empire there 1 has been much in recent months to 1 give hope. There have, from time to time, been outbreaks of slogan warfare — the 1 buy-from-those-who-buy-from-you, sound, but uninspiring ' sort of thing — but the campaign re- ' cently launched here in favour of buying, travelling, eating, and drink- ! ing British is no mere isolated move- * ment. As Mr. J. H. Thomas told a gathering of journalists, of whom I was one, in outlining the plans for the Empire Marketing Board's drive, no Government or official effort can succeed without the support of private business houses and the man in the street. And, this time, the events of recent months have placed the man in the street in the proper receptive frame of mind for the present powerfully-driven urge to "Buy British." The housewife is being persuaded — by advertisement, poster, and wireless — to buy British or Empire groceries, the traveller to use British ships, to seek his winter sunshine in Fiji instead of Monte Carlo. Royalty has led the way. The Prince of j Wales officially opened the campaign | with a broadcast appeal, and the ! Duke of Connaught, with practical i purpose, has forsaken his villa in the j South of France to winter at Sid- i mouth. i These are potent examples, and there can be no doubting the value | of the campaign. But in this, as in other things, the pocket is the weak spot in most people's armour. The & in most foreign countries has lost its traditional power, and is now worth only two-thirds of its face value. This is the most powerful ally of spending witKin the Empire. A Falstaffian Cricketer Economy has spread even to 1 cricket, and I am sorry that one of the results of it has been the loss to county cricket of Richard Tyldesley, Lancashire''s leg-break bowler. His Falstaffian figure, draped in a loose sweater like a giant's robe, always helps to keep a game in good humour; he makes the bat look puny, and when he connects properly (which is not as often as I should like), his hits are in proportion to his size. For his bulk, too, he is amazingly quick in the field, and many a batsman has been shocked to find how quickly this flannelled mountain can move to the ball. However, his county has refused to give him a contraet for a period of years instead of the customary year-by-year engagement, and so some small League elub will be enriched and the patrons of Old Trafford, Lord's, and the Oval will lose by his change of cricketing occupation. Lancashire, as a team, laek the lighter touch, and I am afraid they are going to be less interesting now that portly Dick Tyldesley is to be seen with them no more. It will concern Lancashire still more that this diligent bowler of ' deceptive slows, who, season after seasan sinee 1919 has reaped harvests of wickets, will be absent from the attack. As a Test match bowler, Tyldesley has never quite "got there," but in county games his value. has been immense. He is only 33; much too young to bury himself in the comparative wilderness of Lancashire League cricket. Maybe the county .will, later on, Seek to bring this picturesque figure back to the class of cricket to which i he belongs.