Mundane Musings

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 250, 12 January 1928, Page 4

Mundane Musings

Midsummer Mermen and Me! Who said there wern’t no mermen these days? There are, there are, ther© ... so there! I found one ... a real live one, at that . . . all muscular and smooth and brown and like a shiny wet seal that had forgotten to grow quite black. Such a dear ... he looked ... and so quaint. All of him that wasn’t copper-coloured was clad in a scarlet bathing-suit, and he was sitting on a great rock waiting for something to happen.

Something happened all right . . . the something was me . . . me in a bather of just as ruddy a colouring as his, with a cute little cap of helmet shape snuggling over my water-wave and just allowing on© or two naughty bits of hair to wave out a greeting to nice mermen. I was enjoying myself ever so much, too, that Sunday afternoon at Milford . . . just loving myself whole-heartedly, and being the teeniest bit sorry that there wasn’t someone else there to do a bit of loving, too ... I seemed too good to be selfish about. Egotist, well why not? My bathing togs were really-truly Milanese, and had cost a mental storm and four guineas besides, and my cap was the darlingest thing . . . and as for me inside, well, my face might not knock the film directors of the world crazy, but there’s nothing too bad wrong with the rest of me, and the rest’s the most important part, in a bathing suit! Isn’t it, now? And my merman was sitting on a rock, and the sun was glistening on the part of him that wasn’t covered up, making him seem more coppery and sleek than ever, and shining into his eyes, which were dark and violet, with purply lights in them . . . no! they were not a seasick colour. They suggested Passion and Pasts and Purple intrigues, all nice kinds of ones, washed clean and tempting by the waves. And I skipped closer and cupped my rosebud mouth with my hands, ready to call “Hall-00-00. How are you?” Only, that call didn’t get made . . . just as I took a deep breath down past my little diaphragm, so that the call would be quite a melodious one, the merman turned round and spotted me. Of course, something like that would have to happen to me, just when I was feeling properly thrilled about everything and being glad I’d got a new primrose-coloured dance frock to wear, in case my merman asked me out. Something like what? Well! As I was telling you, he spotted me. Nothing wrong with that. I wanted to. But . . .he got up off his rock with the swift grace of a panther, and strode over to me and smirked down, -while he said in anything but proper mermen accents: “’Ullo, kid! Wot abart a bit o’ lovin’ ?” Now I ask you? W’as it fair that he should be something like that, and yet look like a truly-goodness merman who came from the great clean waves, where men are mermen? In future I shall only look at men when they’re all covered up. Then you can guess pretty correctly whether they are men or only things. Mermen! Ugh! H.M.