NEW NOTES IN HOMES Beverley Nichols's Bright Idea

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 774, 21 September 1929, Page 22

NEW NOTES IN HOMES Beverley Nichols's Bright Idea

Beverley 'Nichols, brilliant young English humorist, -writes in the “Daily Chronicle ot social pranks that have not yet been played . . . ■3 OANES are coming into j vogue again. Young j men, one hears, are i | dressing up as painters U and asking their friends 3 to exhibitions of peculiar pictures. Young women are dressing up as ladies, ringing fr6nt-door bells and taking orders for nonexistent vacuum cleaners. As a result, shrieks of girlish laughter are resounding in the tidier parts of London, Professor Pfister (that happens to be a real name) would probably attribute these pictures to a sinister wave of the great-aunt complex, which, as -we all know, is at present deluging these bright but degenerate shores. That may or may not be. The fact remains that there are still some hoaxes which have never been played, and this is the moment in which to play them. For my first hoax I should take several banana skins, chop them fine, sprinkle them with lemon juice, and arrange them “daintily” in a green bowl. To these I would add a little tommon grass, and over the whole I would spread sevei-al portions of cold tripe cut into rxxde shapes and garnished with parsley. I would then ask several middleaged women to lunch, and when the dish was served I would say, “Of course you’ve all heard of Professor Split?” Of course they have. Reassured on this point, I would point to the dish and say. “This is the finest thing he ever did. If you eat this for three weeks, you will grow thin if you are fat, fat if you are thin, and if you are already the right shape. . .” (here I would smirk amiably at nobody in particular) “you will remain rigidly set In that shape for the rest of your lives.” I would wager any money that the dish would be devoured in its entirety. Next I would like to go to a night club with a female confederate and take the centre of the floor as soon as the music began. Standing quite still, we would put out our tongues at one anothei-. We should then slap each other on the back. We should then walk quickly round the room jerking our heads and saying "Pish!” We should then sit down. The name of this dance is “Osteopath Blues,” and it is enjoying a phenomenal success in Harlem. I would like to go to a cocktail party and introduce at least three new adjectives. This would be really almost too easy, because in certain of the brighter London sets the Eng-

lish language is already becoming meaningless, and conversation is relapsing into the guggle-guggle noises employed by the remoter savages of Central Africa. Wliy not go a step farther? If somebody asks you how you are feeling, why not. reply, “Extremely woo-wah." If they show the least disconcertment, smile at them with pitying scorn, and within ten minutes you will hear them gravely assuring their neighbours that Mr. D. H. Lawrence’s pictures were among the most woo’wah things they had ever seen. Which will be perfectly true. Next, in view of certain musical parties which I have recently attended, I would like to take a large and well-fed cat and allow it to walk, slowly but firmly, across the keys of a grand piano, while I noted on a sheet of manuscript the precise chords which its paws prbduced. I would then remove the cat, and learn the chords, by heart, subsequently playing them as the opening bars of a new symphony by Roshkosk, the amazing young Russian who rescued his aunt when she was being, attacked by a swarm of caviar in the Vol^i. On a lower scale of musical taste I would like to take 20 American songs of the type which always begin with the singer earnestly requesting to be removed from his immediate locality. Why so many American singers should tind themselves landed in the wrong place I cannot imagine, but there they are. Or rather, there they are not, e.g., Take me back to Ohio | (corn Tennessee ('Where cotton Mississippi J trees J Let me go bytrain } • r mother airplane '-to see my-{ , , , on foot } other blood v. relations. I would then take ten trebles, ten basses, and a double whisky and soda. Finally I would sing the song with intense passion and drawn blinds If any girl recognised the difference, she would be no lady. And now—the little moral—the few sad (but brave) sentences that you have learnt to expect, the pause in the laughter, the catch in the throat, the expansion of the chest, and all that. But, seriously, I do think that fewer people every day think for themselves. If you live in one stratum of society and hate Epstein, you are regarded as a nitwit. If you live in another and worship him, you are regarded as a moral leper. People are profoundly shocked if you really say what you mean. Go to any party, anywhere, and speak with utter sincerity for five minutes about any subject whatever, and the

silence will be broken by dull thuds, as one by one the guests fall to the ground in sheer terror. You can swear and get drunk, and not only break all the Commandments hut jump ou them and grind them into the Aubusson carpet, and you will not even attract attention to yourself. But if you flick your fingers in the face of any popular idol, or fail to throw mud in the face of any popular laughingstock, you will not only create disapproval but real pain and distress. You see, you will have jogged some of the poor little creatures out of their groove, and that is the ultimate sin