MUNDANE MUSINGS

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 52, 24 May 1927, Page 4

MUNDANE MUSINGS

TEETOTAL D.T.’S

They present quite a few features of the alcoholic variety, except that they do not include a vision of pink snakes and purple elephants. Felicity comes in, unnaturally bright of eye, with hectically flushed cheeks and the restless, jerky manner which she has acquired lately. “Sitting over the fire reading?” she says scornfully, gazing with disgust at our comfortable, recumbent figure. “What you ought to do is to go for a brisk walk, a five-mile tramp would do you all the good in the world.” You reply, patiently, that you went for a nice long walk this morning, thank you, and that, being rather tired, you thought a rest and a book would be pleasant. “Ah, but you don’t get enough exercise, you aren’t in training, that’s why you feel tired,” says Felicity anxiously, springing up from the sofa where she has been sitting and perching herself on the arm of your chair. “Now every morning of my life I’m up at seven and do an hour’s Swedish drill before breakfast, and then I go for a long tramp in Richmond Park, and after lunch I roll for twenty minutes.” “You what?” “Roll, dear, on the floor, so good for the digestion and the hips. Then I play a round of golf every afternoon and, of course, tennis in summer, and twice a week I have my eurythmic class, and then there’s the Morris dancing and the gym. in the evenings. “There’s nothing like exercise for making you fit and energetic, why, I couldn't sit still like you now, if I wanted to.” The awful thing is she can’t. She moves restlessly from one 2hair to another, fidgets and drums with her heels on the floor, her hands are never still, her eyes have a strained look, she is beginning to twitch; in fact, she is showing every sign of what an American writer has called “biological delirium tremens.” She may protest that she “feels fine,” but so does the drug fiend after a dose of opium or cocaine, and Felicity, in her excessive use of exercise, is spurring on her overtired nerves and muscles, just as foolishly as a dopetaker. “I simply must keep my weight down?” protests the exercise fiend, rushing madly from Turkish bath to badminton, and swimming to hockey; haggard, restless, feverish. “I can’t keep still a minute,” they cry jerkily, sufferers from “teetotal d.t.’s” now*, and candidates for nervous breakdowns in the future.