FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 543, 21 December 1928, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By

“THE LOOK-OUT MAN.”

THE PUNTER’S REVERIE Oil learning from last night's Sun of the arrival, by special train from the South, of 50 racehorses, worth £30,000, to participate in next week’s races. Fourteen cars of horseflesh, Worth thirty-thousand no mis. Trainers, grooms , and stable-lads, With fifty glossy-coated grads. All the biggest “certainties” Ever fed on oats. Every horse a winner — So his trainer says. Fifty mokes to choose between j Back your choice with every bean. Then collect your winnings — The other fellow pays. Sounds like easy pickings —- The wherewithal to roam In pleasure on the seven seas I “Living handsome ” at your ease. But — it’s rather harder than it sounds — I wish they’d stayed at home. T, TOHEROA. LIBEL City Councillor O. Mcßrine said at the council meeting last night that it might he libellous to describe a man as a waterside worker. —But not as libellous as to describe him as an Auckland city councillor. A HAPPY NEW YEAR The Devonport Fire Brigade had some hose practice at the Masonic Hotel, Devonport, last evening. It is understood that the first action of the fire brigade, on arrival, was to play the hose on the slate. PIGEON PIE Two boxes of pigeons, nearly 100 birds in all, were released from the Marama, this morning, according to prearranged plan, when she was off the Three Kings. The Palmerston North fanciers to whose lofts they are to return will not be hard put to it for an explanation if some of the birds fail to appear. It is very near Christmas. THE GLORIES OF SAIL The sight of the barque Olivebank moving up the channel yesterday afternoon under bare poles, with the tug Te Awhina supplying the motive power must have revived memories in the breasts of many old-timers. Once there was a day when skippers who knew the harbour, and he a fair breeze, would bring even a full-rigged ship round North Head under sail. Nowadays those glories live only in pictures. During the war the American schooners that were hastily commissioned to fill the deficiency in transport facilities and brought many cargoes of lumber, coal and case oil to Auckland, often sailed right up to their anchorage. But the schooner is handled with much greater ease, in constricted waters, than the stately full-rigged ship. TJhe windjammer, however, is now a rare spectacle. Even the schooners have had their day. Many of them are back on the mud in ’Frisco Harbour, whence so many of them —and crazy steamers as well —were dragged off in wartime to make fortunes for their owners.

FICKLE FEMININITY It takes New Zealanders to stir old London. If it isn’t the All Blacks who are doing it, it is someone else, as witness the mild sensation created by a New Zealand girl, who has caused a flutter in the dovecotes by changing her heart’s choice within an hour or so of her wedding. Frugally, however, she made the wedding arranged for the one, serve quite as effectively for the other. She also has an Airedale, whjch whines, as dogs sometimes do, presumably because they can neither sing baritone, like a bull-frog, nor soprano, like a skylark. The same sort of vacillation upon the part of lovely woman, exercising one of her accepted prerogatives, probably happens every day of the week, in London, as elsewhere; but in this case the lady either dropped a note to the. Press photographers, or else blushingly endured their presence when someone el>; sent them along. One is reminded of the famous affair when a titled lady, on the eve of her wedding, left her betrothed waiting in the carriage—it was in the days of carriages and Dundreary whiskers —while she dropped into a big London drapers to complete her trosseau. But the shop had a back door on another street. She went straight through, met another admirer at the other door, and married him forthwith. The two gentlemen concerned became enemies for life One swore to ruin the other on the turf and did so. The lady had made an unhappy choice. Her last-minute selection proved, as far as his domestic virtues were concerned, to be an utter miss-in-baulk. It was probably be cause there were no photographers on hand to give the eloping couple a good send-off,