Bright Spots and Meals

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 68, 11 June 1927, Page 16

Bright Spots and Meals

Toilers of the Night While Parliament is in Session PITY THE LIBRARY STAFF (From Our Resident Reporter. 1 WELLINGTON, Friday. All through the long hours of the night and morning—the members of Parliament talk, with few bright spots to shatter the tedium of debate. Bright spots there are, however, in the lives of those whose presence in the House becomes essential for several months of the year. One of them is Bellamy’s. Not that the name Bellamy’s sug gests spots bright or dull —though sometimes there are spots—for Bellamy’s is primarily a place where Ministers, members, secretaries and others take their meals, and where the best meal of the day can be secured for Is 6d. Most of those engaged in occupations in the Buildings during the session are allowed in Bellamy’s, but to some these premises are taboo. Among those excluded are the duty members of the Parliamentary Library Staff. Just why they are not allowed to sup with the mighty and the lowly has never bene quite explained. At nights—when the drag of the House becomes heaviest, and when supper-time is welcomed as the spring in the desert—the library duty man has either to bring his own supper or adjourn to a handy fish and chip shop immediately across the road from the Buildings. Fish and chips! While the other members of the staff —the messengers who wait on the library staff —have tea, coffee, cocoa, served from silver pots, with biscuits, cheese, bread, butter, cake The messengers’ supper is an event. If the House remains sitting at 11 o'clock messengers are allowed free supper; if the House rises at 10.55 — no supper except with the special permission of Mr. Speaker. If things are in order and supper comes on at 11, the messengers line up along a narrow bench which runs parallel with the culinary department and have a bountiful supper of the best that is going. But they stand to it—there is no accommodation otherwise. It is purely a “self-help” institution, this messengers’ supper. But of course nobody sees them; and the messengers themselves don’t mind. In the new wing—still a long way off—provision is to be made for accommodation for messengers’ meals. Meanwhile they eat standing. With members of the Press gallery eating is by no means the most unimportant function of Parliamentary reporting. In addition to lunch and dinner, supper comes on when the House adjourns at 9.30 p.m. Then if the House sits till midnight the Press eat cold meats and pickles at the expense of the State. Again at 3 a.m.— if the Government has not yet stifled the Opposition and got the Bill through —another supper of similar dimensions attracts the pressmen to the old wing of the building. By that time, however, there is nobody left in the public galleries, and members are not so voluble as before 9.30, when all galleries are well filled Then, of course, members have bil liards. . .-. But that can wait. The business of the country must be got through. . . .