THINGS TO COME A Run Through The Programmes

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 20, 10 November 1939, Page 6

THINGS TO COME

A Run

Through The Programmes

HE old-fashioned idea was that a disobedient child was simply a bad child, sick with a dose of original sin. You beat him and he got better. The new idea is that the disobedient child is probably your fault because you have not brought him up properly, and that in any case he is more sinned against than sinning. The talks by Mrs. Beatrice Beeby on the subject of the problem child have aroused a good deal of interest, and the NBS hopes to broadcast more from her. Meanwhile, another expert is going on the air with this subject. Miss D. E. Dolton, Tutor in Child Psychology under the Association for Country Education, in Canterbury, who has been holding study classes in Canterbury centres, is to give a series of talks from 3YA. The first of these. "The Disobedient Child," will be given on the evening of Wednesday, November 15. Toujours La Delicatesse The Association for Country Education will not be more than mildly interested if you tell them that you eat your peas with honey, and have done it all your life. They'll agree it does sound funny, though it keeps the peas on the knife; but we expect that their talk from 4YA at 3.15 p.m. on Friday, November 17, entitled "Things the Best People Don’t Do" is concerned more with

kitchen methods than with finesse over the platter. It is not so much how you eat your peas that counts with them as how you cook them. Cabbage, they will probably tell you, may be sucked through a straw or gulped from a trough so long as its Vitamin C is retained. We may, of course, be wide of the mark. Education, for our artist, anyway, is inseparable from gastronomics, and we, perforce, must follow his suit. Listeners would be safer to find out for themselves just what are the "things the best people don’t do."

Broadcasting Golf A portable short-wave transmitter will be used to carry Harold Black’s voice from Miramar Golf Course to a receiving station, and thence to Titahi Bay, when he gives‘? a running commentary on the final of the New Zealand Amateur Golf Championships on Friday, November 17, from 2 p.m. With him will go an operator, and an assistant to carry the equipment: a _ battery-powered transmitter sending through an aerial from a bamboo pole. His voice will be picked up from the scene of play by a receiver near the club house telephone, relayed by landline to the 2YA transmitter, and broadcast from there. For the many outside broadcasts where the microphone must follow the event away from stationary vantage points, all four of the main NBS stations have this equipment. Pulpit Humour Remember the Anglican clergyman who gave out from the pulpit the hymn, "Art Thou Weary, Art Thou Languid?" after a sermon lasting 45 minutes? Of course threequarters of an hour of sermon is nothing to the Scots, and much of the Rev. John Dickie’s talk at 7.30 p.m. on Tuesday, November 14, at 4YA, will be taken up with the lapses and deliberate witticisms of Presbyterian divines. Deliberate humour in the pulpit is not common. There is a good selection of slips in Dr. Dickie’s talk. New Serial W. Graeme-Holder’s flair for mystery and startling climax will keep ears glued to sets tuned to 2YD during the serial broadcast of his play, "The Nuisance." By means of many artful dodges, the Nuisance contrives to inform the police of his plans before they are committed, yet, much to Inspector Baldwin’s disgust, he always carries off the booty. Sergeant Rivers is not very helpful, and the good inspector begins to fear that even his pet canaries are not safe. First episode from 2YD at 8.45 p.m. on Sunday, November 12. Critics Beware If "Out of the Mouths of Babes" were’ not an excellent play, one would think it might have been written solely to let the author get his own back. W. Graeme-Holder is too well-known to have to worry too much about what the critics say, but in this play he has shown just what havoc a savagely "he

destructive criticism can wreak. Brian Armitage, the leading character, has written a play which he knows is good. Yet, through ~-an utterly damning notice, the show fails and » the author finds himself penniless and without hope. What happens later, listeners to 4YA Dunedin, at 9.25 p.m. on Sunday, November 12, will discover. As for any stray critic who accidentally hears it-it may serve to dilute his vitriol, anyway. Wig as Talisman Our grand-uncle wears a piece of greenstone on his lengthy watch-chain, and an aunt, twice-removed, has a horse’s tooth she found in the wood-pile at the age of three, which she alleges brings her luck. A good many people, in fact, have some lucky charm or talisman. For example, the talisman of Billy Merson, the comedian, is an auburn wig "with a bald patch at the back of the head and two coy curls across the top of the high forehead." This he procured when he was a struggling acrobat; it, and his personality, have since brought him fame. Billy Merson will present popular songs at 9.51 p.m. on Monday, November 13, from 4YA Dunedin. Tasman Missed Among the explorers ‘who missed oppor- tunities was Abel Tasman, who, so far as we know, was the first European to visit this country. He saw little of New Zealand, and what he saw he did not like, so he sailed away without landing on our shores, and left it to Cook to complete the charting of New Zealand’s outline. Possibly the committee system of directing the expedition had something to do with this. Moreover, European ideas of what was wealth in those days were very restricted. It would have seemed a wild fantasy that this country would one day become the dairy farm of an Empire. Martin Nestor is to speak on Tasman at 2YA at 7.30 p.m. on Monday, November 13. A First Performance England has not produced very many great composers compared with other countries, and when Sir Edward Elgar died two " or three years ago the loss to English music was incalculable; he was one of her greatest sons. At the Wellington Symphony Orchestra concert, to be broadcast through 2YC Wellington at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, November 14, one of his works, "Introduction and Allegro for Strings," will be presented for the first

time in this country. The other items on the programme are by English and French composers; Elgar’s ever-popular "Pomp And Circumstance No. 1" is among them. The orchestra is under the baton of Leon de Mauny, A Strange Tale The ordinary and the bizarre meet in "The Kidnapped ‘General’", the play adapted from a Stacy Aumonier story. We cannot tell you too much, because that would give the story away. But we can tell you

that the "General" is a General Motor Bus. The "General" takes a strange journey into the country one day, driven by a grinning ex-serviceman and packed with fearful financiers. Its end is in a bosky dell. But did the whole thing ever happen, or was it a snare and illusion? Your guess is as good as ours was, before we heard what you will hear if you tune in to 1YA Auckland, at 8.0 p.m. on Monday, November 13. Truth on the March No trial in history has done more to make history than the famous, or infamous, " Dreyfus Case"-chiefly because there was a famous novelist to put it on record. It was Zola who dared to write his famous " J Accuse," and although for this indictment of corruption in high places he was himself persecuted, "truth was on the march," and at length prevailed. Those listeners who may not know the full story of the "Dreyfus Case" should tune in to 2YA Wellington at 9.50 p.m. on Wednesday, November 15, when it will be told. And from 3ZR Greymouth, on Tuesday at 7.30, and from 4YZ Invercargill, on Sunday at 8.30, will be heard the begin- ning of the serial, "The Story of Emile Zola."