HAVE A HOBBY

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 232, 23 May 1932, Page 8

HAVE A HOBBY

MANY WELL KNOWN MEN HAYE UNUSUAL RECREATIONS. SOME EXAMPLES. The advice of Sir Humphrey Rolleston to everybody to cultivate a hobby or alternative occupation side by side with the main work of lif e has aroused interest in Britain, says a London contributor to a newspaper. Distinguished men have many curious recreations. The writer went recently to spend a fascinatmg hour with one of London's authorities on hobbies, Mr. W. W. Grantham, K.C., son of the late Mr. Justice Grantham. His flat in Paper Buildings, Temple, contains two collections of excepGonal interest, and he is as ardent an up'holder'of hobbies as when ,a *Hnrrow schoolboy, he started fifty years r.go. The collection seen included: 18.821 railway tickets from almost every country in the world; more than 1500 first edftions of magazines and newspaper s; twenty or thirty stoolba'll bats made on board ship, in Tokio, at Reykjavik (Iceland), and at Vladivostock and elsewhere. .The bats were given to Mr. Grantham and autographed to mark his introduction of the game to people who were strangers tc it. Mr. Grantham said: "These hobbies have undoubtedly enriched my life. They take one's mind off everyday work, and, in my case, the railwaj? tickets bring back pleasant memories of my travels. The advantage of having several hobbies is that, if one fails you are not stranded. And sometimes they run well together. For ir.etanee, I have often collected a railway ticket and a first number of a magazine on the same journey. "I began the ticket collection as a schoolboy — no doubt partly out of the fun of trying to get past the barri iv without giving my ticket up. In later years my sons have carried the col--lection on. "I have travelled widely in Europe, America and the Far East, and my fri'ends — and strangers, too — 1 a^e sent me tickets. . "Here," Mr. Grantham said, srniling, "is a ticket to Hell" — actually from Hommelvik to Hell, both places in Norway. He has two tickets to Lossiemouth, Scotland, the birthplace of the Prime Minister, sent hihi » by Miss Isobel MacDonald, and anotVr he prizes was brought by him from Mexieo in 1888.