FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 304, 15 March 1928, Page 10

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By “THE LOOK-OUT MAN.” HIGH COST OF FISHING Some of the wealthy who come to New Zealand for big fishing have been moaning about the high cost of the sport at Russell, where they can hire a launch for the whole day at £4. Because they can buy a schnapper for 9d they think they should get a. 4001 b. swordfish or an 8001 b. mako shark for Is. If we provided them with whales for eighteenpence, they would want 3d discount. * * * PICKING VP CHEQUES It must be beautiful to be an airman and fly from place to place, picking up cheques, just like a bee flitting for honey from flower to flower. Look at Bert Hinkler, for instance —just hopping from banquet to banquet and civic reception to civic reception, and every time he sits down for a rest he is presented with a cheque amid tumultuous cheers. Darwin, Bundaberg, Brisbane, Sydney and Canberra (a Government docket for £2,000 at the Commonwealth’s capital), have all handed him scraps of paper with large figures written thereon. Surely he must visit Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and Hobart in their turn. His is indeed a chequered career! COMMITTEES AT VARIANCE A delightful anomaly in the working of the City Council is the inability of the Water Committee to be a water committee. It is supposed to be a water committee, but before it can do anything to provide water, it has to ask the Works Committee. It took months for the Works Committee to make up its mind to allow the W'ater Committee to put on double shifts at the Huia dam, the while the citizens were hurling anathema at the Water Committee because it could not provide the water the Works Committee would not allow it to provide. Now Councillor Phelan proposes that there should be a special committee to deal with water. Perhaps the City Council in its imperishable wisdom will hand the water business over to the committee which runs the Zoo, and the Zoo over to the Tramways Committee, and the tramways over tc the oh, well, any old committee will do for the tramways, as we all know. * * • £I.OOO A WEEK “I earn £IOO a week,” said an actor recently in Auckland, inflating his chest before the local admirer. “But I don’t get it,” he added, sadly. No actor is paid as much as he thinks he is worth, and there is a widespread public suspicion that most of them do not receive half of what they say they do. This is even more the case in regard to actresses; but though the salaries of some "stars” may be exaggerated, there is no question of one performer earning £I,OOO a week in London. Miss Ruth Draper, an American, is the lady—“a remarkable woman, who runs her show entirely by herself. She has no scenery, no make-up. A few quick changes of costume are all she requires, but her amazing character sketches have been filling a London theatre every day. She occupies a large stage alone for two hours every performance, without even the assistance of music.” Seemingly an intensely compelling personality. Miss Draper is booked for a New Zealand tour. It remains to be seen whether the New Zealanders will consider they are promised enough for their money in a “one-woman” show.

LEFT LYING ABOUT The registered packet containing £1,400 in notes that was stolen by a lad employed at the Wellington Post Office had been left upon the desk by one of the clerks. Leaving little trifles like that lying about is one of those peculiarities to which Government officers are addicted. In this case the wonder is not so much that the £1,400 was stolen as that the Post Office recovered it all, with the exception of £l3 odd. THE USE OF TRESSES The plucky London typist, Miss Gleitze, had to abandon her attempt to swim the Straits of Gibraltar, owing to exhaustion, "vyhen only one and ahalf miles from the African coast. It is now revealed that she could hardly have landed even if she had succeeded in covering the distance, as she had forgotten to store any clothes on the accompanying tug. “That’s where the shingle fails and the girls miss their flowing tresses.. A girl with a wealth of flowing hair could smile at the absence of a bathing suit,” you say. But Miss Gleitze kept her hair —real Godiva hair, it looks in the picture, aqd it is improbable that the absence of clothes would have prevented her landing.