FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 559, 11 January 1929, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By

“THE LOOK-OUT MAN.”

SEA FEVER Part of the hospitality showered on the crew of the yacht Victory by the people of Norfolk Island consisted of passion fruit. They left a trail of passion fruit skins all the way from Norfolk Island to Whangaroa. Across the sparkling sea her wake is dancing. Rising and Jailing on the ocean’s i breast. Its ivory pattern spin* a skein entrancing. Traced from her counter to the golden west. Thus sang the poets in the days of glory. Alas, the truth demands a different story. Across the sea- extends a, lino of litter. The ocean is the seaman’s garbage chute . In this case—though the truth is very bitter — The wake teas mainly skins of passion fruit. Romantic ie the patji of modern sliippin’. Its milestones are the peanut and the pippin. Perhaps f twas ever thus, and old Magellan. Even friend. Tasman, and. beloved Cool:. Left in their wake some well-denuded melon, A hambone. or the remnants of a choolc. If morsels moist and fresh were not the fashion, Be sure they had the will —if not the passion ! T. TOHEROA. INEVITABLE The first man to swim in the new baths at Suva, according to a news item, was a plumber, who dived in fully clothed. He had probably left his tools at the bottom. LOSING CASTE Having appointed a butcher to kill its own meat, the Waikato Hospital Board finds it has no place for him to work.] The operating theatre seems to have gone out of favour. SWEET AND LOW Even the village wits can make fun of the regulation prohibiting passengers from talking to motormen on tbe Auckland trams. “Don’t Speak to the Motorman,” reads a notice on one tram, and underneath someone has added “Sing to him.” * * * DEMOCRACY AT PLAY Interesting among tendencies of the age is the growing popularity of public tennis courts. The modern democracy, sport-loving though it is, prefers to take its sport cheaply, and this explains the popularity of the municipal courts at Victoria Park. Exhibiting -sartorial solecisms that would shock the true tennis stylist, holiday-makers gather there in numbers. Braces and stiff collars are accepted without demur. Anything but hobnail boots goes. In spite of these minor defects, municipal tennis is au admirable thing. There was a time when potent clubs, with waiting lists running to several sheets of foolscap, could afford to pick and choose where membership was concerned. To-day the same clubs are soliciting members. Only the advent of a municipal golf course is needed to do the same for the winter sport. In Wellington the Berhampore golf links attract all classes. It is no longer embarrassing to confess that one plays at Berhampore. Indeed, the established clubs look to the municipal links to furnish them with promising material. When the Wellington City Council threatened to raise the price of municipal golf, there was a tremendous outcry, and the threat was not fulfilled. It had not been made because the links were not paying, but only to discourage the heavy attendances. Every week-end last winter the course was overcrowded. For the Wellington City Council it has been a splendid investment.

STREET ANGEL Italy under Mussolini must be an unduly sensitive country. “Street Angel,” the Janet Gaynor film which was burned in Shanghai by an avenging band from an Italian gunboat, has been .iudged by independent critics to be a fine and artistic production. Even the Italian Board of Cinema censorship saw nothing wrong when the film, a.t a pre-view, presented Naples for what it is—a city beautiful to outward appearance, but on closer inspection clogged with narrow streets and ftppalling slums. After the board of censors had passed the film, eminent Italians were invited to its premidre. When the real and unsalubrious Naples flickered before their eyes, they whistled and screamed in protest. The newspaper "Impero” wrote: “Even the classic sun of Italy was obliterated by Fox directors. . . Nothing of that nature exists in Mussolini’s Italy.” Wrathful at the board’s non-vigilance, Mussolini dismissed it en bloc. Tourists will recollect, however, that Naples is not always salubrious. “See Naples and Die” is a proverb that lias been much perverted, just as Mark Twain perverted it when, having inspected Napier and its suburb, The Spit, while he was visiting New Zealand, he later wrote: “See Napier and Spit.”