MUNDANE MUSINGS

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 22, 18 April 1927, Page 4

MUNDANE MUSINGS

HOLIDAYS AND ROMANCE ( Written for THE SUN.) And that’s another holiday over! Heigho! But it was sweet! Why, why are holidays always the time when one falls in love ... or if not in love exactly . . . the time when one becomes infatuated, intrigued ... or that everuseful thing . . .“friends until death us do part?” One goes away for a day or so, perhaps to some seaside spot, to a big hotel, or any old where. No matter where it is, one takes along one’s prettiest clothes, and has one’s permanent wave renewed, and in-

dulges in lots of little beautifying frivolities that one doesn’t usually bother about . . . and then of course when one is looking and feeling at one’s brightest and best . . . ’long comes some insidious little (oi; big, as you prefer ’em) butterfly man, who in about two two’s makes one feel that the sun never shone for him till you appeared . . . that if you go away it will never shine again . . . some casual, caressing dear in short, who has the supreme art of making you feel that you are the one woman in the world wiio matters . . . that without you his life would be a blank . . . even though you know that he flutters off to the next passably attractive damsel and says the same thing to her, in the same ardent manner . . . with just the same sighs and smiles and hopes. But what amusing dears they are . . . in all their infinite variety! Excepting, of course, the serious, sad and solemn Romeo who has truly never sunned himself in the light of any other eyes of blue or green or brown. Beware that type! He’ll grab your hand as though it were a lifebuoy, purpling it in the process, and is often likely to become a serious nuisance. But the other type! Oh! Plow amusing . . . and how subtle! He has a perfect genius for developing “situations” out of nothingness . . . a moonlight night . . . white sands and the ripple of waves . . . perhaps a seaside dance-hall, with an orchestra playing some frightfully hackneyed (but at the moment, none the less alluring) tune. You dance, of course . . perhaps you have supper in a palmcovered corner, and here he takes your hand . . . absent-mindedly, as though he’s not aware it’s not Jfiis cigarette or handkerchief. Sooner or later he kisses one . . . unless he’s a very strange specimen . . . but the thrill about his type is that one is never prepared for him. Unlike all our other amusing little kisses, his are unexpected. Perhaps ’twill fall on the top of one’s head . . . the back of one’s neck, or lightly on one’s shoulder! Naturally, one spring's round indignantly (?)... to find . . . little Athol or Eric is carelessly lighting a cigarette! Bland and exquisite innocence sit on his features, and instead of saying. “How dare you?” you (sorry I mean “one”), will probably laugh. And so it goes. It’s all very amusing, and a part of youth . . . but isn’t it all rather futile . . . and a waste of sweetness? Ah! Sour grapes . . . why try to moralise, when in very truth you’re wishing the holiday wasn’t over . . . and are on tiptoe for the next one, with its attendant stolen moments of folly and frivol! Away to your little fragment chest of stolen moments . . . with one more precious memory to be added to the store ... at times to be taken out one by one and smiled over . . . laughed over . . . p’raps even to have a shining little tear shed over them . . . according to their worth ... or more likely, according to the amount of outrageous good looks each sharer of these moments was blessed with. Away! H. AI.