FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 269, 3 February 1928, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By “THE LOOK-OUT MAN” MAKING IT SNAPPY It is good to learn (says an English “colyumist”) that Lady Macbeth is to be played as a vamp. Tradition has made her a large, raw-boned woman with as. much sex-appeal as a power station. It is time that a touch of Hollywood should be added to the interpretation. But will it not also be necessary to put some pep into her speeches, For instance, when she says, “All our service In every no int, twice done, and then done double , Were poor and single business, to contend Against those honours, deep and broad •wherewith s Your majesty loads our house," it simply doesn’t get across. Let us put it right. Like this: . ... . King, Ain’t you just been the generous little guy To me and Mac? When tee think what you done It tickles us to death." We progress. THIRTEEN ALL THE WAY Just as there is a profound belief that thirteen is an unlucky number, there is a conviction, equally popular, that strong combination of thirteens will overcome even the most ominous portents of disaster. The latter superstition had an excellent chance to practise its effects at the Tamaki regatta on Saturday. One yacht, number 13, had 13 minutes’ handicap, and finished at precisely 13 minutes past five. The result Is indecisive. The boat was placed second. * * • JELLYFISH PERILS The type of jellyfish now visiting Auckland in such great numbers is an innocuous creature, hut at times it contrives to inflict terror upon the stoutest heart. Of all the things which one may strike when swimming, a jellyfish is the least pleasant. To the uninitiated its soft and slimy mass at once suggests something mysteriously sinister, and if the imagination is working overtime the alarmed swimmer strikes for the shore in the firm belief that a shark is after him. * * * BOYS OF FLOCK HOUSE Flock House boys, brought to New Zealand under the system by which the grateful sheep owners of the Dominion are training young English lads for farm work, have had more than their share of bad luck in this country. Two or three have met violent death in accidents, another was a suicide, and the latest to jump into the news figures there as a forger. Nevertheless Flock House has already proved its value. The fine building where the boys are housed was formerly the stately home of the McKelvie family, which owned an enormous tract of the Rangitikei Coast. To-day their homestead, one of the finest in New Zealand, is full of interesting naval relics, appropriate to the purpose it is serving as a training school for boys who are almost invariably the sons of British sailors killed during the war.

7T. ri~ 7!- # Tft 7f( 7ft 7T 7ft 7ft 7ft 7i7 TIDES ARE POOR It is the lack of fresh water that has lately aroused chief complaint, but round the waterfront it has been noticed that even the reliable salt sea is not running up to form. Tides in the Waitemata have lately been exceptionally poor, and nautical men are perturbed. . * « THE RETAINERS “How do you And trade?” asked the Look-out Man, of a bricklayer who came here from a country town and is at present repairing a chimney in the Look-out Cottage. "Pretty fair,” was the reply, "though competition is keen. What is more,” he added, "they play good football here. Auckland’ll do me.” * * * THE HEW ZEALAND DEATH Though dfowning is said by statisticians to claim fewer victims in the Dominion than formerly, it still figures in the news columns as a most appallingly frequent cause of death, and it is still evident that the term, "the New Zealand Death,” with which a coroner once described it, can still be applied to it. On Wednesday a young Wanganui lad, unable to swim, was drowned in the deep end of a city swimming bath, in which he was supporting himself with an inflated tyre under his arms. If in this there was some evidence that the boy’s companions permitted their inexperienced friend an undesirable and fatal freedom of movement, it is equally apparent (as it has been in other cases) that the supervision at the baths was faulty. Too many cases of drowning in New Zealand leave behind them the uneasy feeling that someone has been —. . ~