FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 21, 16 April 1927, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By the LOOK-OUT MAN HOT CROSS-BUNS The hot cross-buns which you ate yesterday and again (toasted) this morning, evolved from the - superstition that bread baked on Good Friday was a specific for almost any complaint. Such bread would be kept all the year round and used, a few crumbs at a time, when there was any "illness. Some people say the hot cross-buns of this generation are not as good as those of the last. But of course nothing was ever as good as it used to be. As far back as 1875 a writer said of the Good Friday bun: “The hot cross-buns are not comparable to those of past times. They want the spice, the crispness, the everything they once had.” Another writer of the last century traces the custom of eating hot cross-buns back to a pagan custom of worshipping the Queen of Heaven with cakes —a custom found alike in China and in ancient Mexico. In Egypt the cakes were formed to resemble the sacred heifer, and thence called bons, which in one of its oblique cases is boun, or bun. * * * ON MAYORS AND EX-MAYORS Dr. Henry T. J. Thacker, who was Mayor of Christchurch when the Prince of Wales came to New Zealand —he was the first public man to introduce . the left-hand shakes at a time when such a method of greeting had Royal approval—has announced his intention of entering municipal politics again. The doctor has given the Press better copy than any other public man in New Zealand. His imagination soars to prodigious heights and he is not afraid to say what he is thinking at any given moment, whether the moment be a good one for the delivery of such thoughts or otherwise. The City Council in Christchruch will be the brighter for his presence. There is likely to be a keen contest in the South between the Rev. J. K. Archer and Mr. C. P. Agar for the mayoralty of Christchurch. Mr. Archer has an excellent record of municipal service and is a keen controversialist. Mr. Agar is prominent in business circles and is possessed of oratorical power, coupled with shrewd commonsense. There should be willing fighting when the seconds leave the ring. STREET STRAGGLERS Numerous invitations to the people of Auckland to walk in the straight and narrow path have fallen on forgetful ears. While the white line is plainly painted on the footways, and a traffic director is stationed every few yards, they will “keep to the left” sufficiently well until they come to an especially attractive shop window. Then they move across and stand six deep —on the right side, which is the wrong side—and turn the stream moving one way into the stream moving the other. Progress then becomes a highly interesting and intricate matter. If there is a wrong way to go people will go it, and this applies not only to Aucklanders but to the inhabitants of other cities also. Just now the white lines are worn off the pavements of the premier street. Instead of restoring them, the civic authorities might erect iron-picket fences along the centre of the paths, with breaks here and there for pedestrians to pass through. * * * THE KINDLY MOTORIST The chairman of the Auckland Automobile Association considers that corporal punishment should be inflicted on people who make unlawful use of other people’s cars—“a few strokes of the birch would make all the difference.” This proposal is altogether too mild, though it does credit to the -kindly heart of the motorist. Let the Look-out Man suggest a proper punishment scale for non-owners of cars: (1) For not crossing the road in haste, six strokes of the birch. (2) For looking resentfully at a motorist who has nearly run over you, twelve strokes. (3) For getting run over, twenty strokes (as soon as you come out of hospital). (4) For looking covetously at a car, thirty strokes of the cat-o’-nine-tails. (5) For touching a car, thirty strokes and twelve months’ imprisonment. (6) For unlawfully using a car, flogging, torture by turning on the wheel, and public amputation of both hands and the driving foot. (7) For stealing and damaging a car, all the above and public hanging. * * » WHERE THE GULLS NEST At the present time hundreds of seagulls are to be found in various paddocks which are being ploughed up. The question has been raised as to where so many of these seabird# build their nests. A Wanganui naturalist says that some time ago he came across a gull’s breeding-place during his perambulations. He found the birds busily engaged. There were nests everywhere, with numbers of nestlings. Incidentally, the size of the gull’s egg rather surprised him. On his return home the investigator brought back with him two nestlings which he reared in his garden, and it was not till then that he knew that the birds with rusty plumage were young, while the beautiful white and black birds were adults. THE NECK-TWISTERS “What a pretty girl!” whispered a prisoner to the warder on the seat of the French equivalent for the Black Maria. Being a Frenchman, so the cable puts it, the warder looked. He saw no pretty girl—and when he looked back he saw no prisoner. But this predilection for girl-gazing is not confined to Frenchmen. The males of Auckland are hard to beat in this respect, and the neck-twisting that goes on in the streets of this city is amazing. Miss Auckland is “the soul of wit” in her modern garb, and the night, with its thousand eyes, is blind in comparison with the eyes of the day, that follow her progress abroad. Auckland’s young men (and some old ones, too) exercise both eyes and necks. The wonder is that more of them are not killed,, by the traffic.