FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 845, 13 December 1929, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By “THE LOOK-OUT MAN.”

THE SIMPLE STORY Strange fantastic lights a-glimmer Line our still suburban street, Ruby gems that shine and shimmer Light the pathway for our feet. Yellow shafts and blazing panels Scintillate in rich display, Turn our dreams to distant channels Waft us to the great white way. Wherefore all these torches twinkling? Why this pyrotechnic scene? Sadly I admit an inkling Of the things these portents mean. Neither fantasy nor fable Lends its lustre to our lane . . . Once the Power Board laid a cable. Now they’re raising it again I ON THE MAT The lessons of the recent wrestling boom have not been lost on the commercial community. At the top of Queen Street is a Arm that exhibits a large display sign’ headed, “Wrestling.” Imagining perhaps that Farmer Vance has returned to the scene of his bucolic triumphs, or that the eminent Mr. Walker Is out the back giving an exhibition of flying tackles, the wrestling enthusiast hastens over for a “close up” of the intriguing signboard. There he reads the supplementary line, making it “Wrestling—r-with prices. We take a fall out of all.” Yet somehow that last sentence seems a little more ambiguous than the originators of the excellent idea can have intended. DEPRESSIONS The authentic graces of Summer are upon us, but premature rejoicing and incautious planning for the week-end are alike inadvisable, for it should be noted that those professional pessimists. the weather prophets, are still in a dismal frame of mind. Their lugubrious prophecies contain little hint that we may get that blazing week-end we have long hoped for. To quote from a contemporary, “The intense depression in the Southern Tasman Sea still maintains its position, and continues to advance eastward on the Dominion.” The official “saver” Is a little more helpful. “The depressions in the South Tasman Sea have now lost intensity.” That is the true spirit. We like to hear of depressions suffering a fate like that. May be there is still hope for the week-end. We shall pack our lunch basket with renewed optimism. “The depressions have lost ia .tensity”—what a grand old world this would be if all sadness, tragedy, trouble and melancholy could fritter and vanish in the same disarming way! NO' SMOKING Nothing is sweeter after a swim than a puff of a cigarette, if you are a cigarette smoker, or a long steady pull on a mellowed pipe, if you favour that way of indulging your system. It will, therefore, surprise smokers to learn that such indulgences in the public baths are expressly and flatly forbidden by the ordinances of the' City Council. Here it Is, by-law No. 570, under the heading “Public Baths”: “No person shall smoke tobacco or other similar substance in or about the baths or any part thereof.” This is just one of the many curious, not to say eccentric, by-laws by which the paternal city fathers show their interest in the baths. Naturally no one takes any notice of it. Not many know that it exists, so at Parnell and Shelly Beach the provident smoker carefully fills his pipe before his dip, and then has no need to damp his tobacco with wet fingers when sitting down for the subsequent delights of a pipe and a sun-bathe. BEHIND THE TIMES There are so many other curious things in these baths by-laws that a little further exploration is warranted. For instance, the following: “Trunks shall be worn over the costumes in the case of males,” demonstrates that the city has failed lamentably to keep abreast of the modern trend in bathing costumes. Any man who appeared with trunks over his natty Coney Island vestments w 7 ould have ample cause to blush in shame and retire from the haunts of the brightly-hued moderns. “No visitors or spectators shall enter or remain in or upon the bath, and all bathers, upon completion of their dressing shall immediately leave the premises.” Furthermore, no person of the “male sex” shall loiter in the vicinity of the dressing boxes used by the “female sex,” and hussies of the “female sex” are correspondingly forbidden to approach the sacred realms set apart for the men. It is interesting to read, too, that no person may remain in the baths for more than half an hour at a time, and that “all per sons bathing or intending to bathe shall proceed direct from the dressing place to the water, and directly to the dressing place on leaving" the water, and shall then dress in ordinary costume.” Since this applies to beaches, as well as baths, it would seem to leave us little chance of acquiring that coat of tan we had set our hearts on this season.