Mundane Musings

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 202, 15 November 1927, Page 5

Mundane Musings

Things I Don’t Want There are several things I don’t want. I was quite surprised and considerably comforted to find how many there were. I first realised it when Mrs. Binner told me she was going to Europe for a long trip. “How lovely! ” I said in the usual way. “I do envy you. ...” And then I stopped. I recognised, with that innate truthfulness that has always been one of my impediments, that I didn’t envy her in the least. I don’t a bit want to go to Europe. I don’t want to go anywhere for that matter. I hate long journeys, and hanging about at the Customs telling people in fancy dress who don’t believe me that I have nothing to declare, and packing my best clothes into inadequate spaces, and living about in hotels. Especially living about in hotels. I dislike intensely to inhabit premises in which everything belongs to somebody else. I have a deep sense of ownership, of personal association with the things among which I live. I must live in my own arrangement of my immediate surroundings. I like to wake in the morning to the colour scheme of my own little room, not that of an indifferent and impersonal board of hotel proprietors. What is the use of all the boasted sunshine of the South of France when it serves only to reveal to my awakening senses a wallpaper between which and myself there is an instinctive and racial antipathy ? I like my own plain, deal table, stained black, with the piece of orange pottery on it that I bought for five shillings, not an aloof and cold-hearted oak bearing somebody else’s ink-stains. J like to come down to breakfast in the morning knowing that there will be an oblong patch of light on the familiar wall just where I have grdwn used to looking for it. I like to find my chosen pictures greeting me. I want my books to be there, and my green jar with yesterday’s roses and my perpetual calendar. To be forced to spend any length of time among rooms that touch me at no points except the physical, is to become discontented and empty. No, I don’t want to go to Europe or the Continent, thank you! Mrs. Binner can have my share of the Promenade des Anglais as well as her own, with pleasure. Having started on this train of thought, I continued. I turned over in my mind other things I didn’t want, things presumably considered desirable by those who possessed them. I don’t want, for instance, to be married to Mr. Hopfoot. I do not suggest for a moment that Mr. Hopfoot wants me to be married to Mr. Hopfoot, either. But as Mrs. Hopfoot seems to extract considerable contentment from being married to Mr. Hopfoot, I feel I can legitimately place non-marriage to him in my mental list. Mr. Hopfoot is an estimable man, thoughtful, kindly, sincere, honest, good,

dutiful, trustworthy, conscientious, an excellent husband, a devoted father . . . no, I don’t want to be married to Mr. Hopfoot. I don’t want the Boggleton’s new Turkey dining-room carpet. I cannot understand why dining-rooms are associated so often with Turkey carpets. I never could feel really comfortable with a Turkey carpet. seem to me to introduce a board meeting note into private intercourse. I feel I ought to begin everything I say with “Ladies and Gentlemen.” Of course, some Turkey carpets are pleasanter to live with than others. You can get fancy Turkeys that are hardly Turkey at all, to any noticeable extent. But the Turkeyness of the Boggletons’ Turkey is inescapable and fundamental, and not even the gentle hand of Time will ever efface or allay it. I don’t want a wireless set. I am not one of those reactionary spirits who pride themselves on an initial suspicion of the discoveries of science, or who feel a sense of superiority in deliberate dissociation from something of universal interest. I admit and admire all the wonder of the radio. I like occasionally to listen-in. But the pleasures of listening- in, I find, are limited. For one thing, there is no choice about it. Someone turns on the loud speaker, and every one is a listener-in, willynilly; and it may happen that just at that moment I am wanting to hear about the disgraceful affair of young Spillet at the temperance meeting someone is telling me. I am not fond of broadcast music; I would rather listen to a good gramophone any day. I am not in such a hurry to hear the world’s news that I cannot wait for it in the papers. The chances that I shall hear my name called by the announcer together with the statement that my rich aunt from Timbuktu has just turned up and is inquiring for me, are negligible. The weather report, I think, should be definitely prohibited. The poorold world has troubles enough as it is. And I don’t care whether Longlegs or Slowcoach won the last race, or both or neither. There are many other things I don’t want; Mrs. Pogge’s new hat, Mrs. Smith’s family of ten, the presidency of the United States. ... No, now I think of it, there is much in life to be thankful for, after all.