WHILE THE KETTLE BOILS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 56, 19 July 1940, Page 42

WHILE THE KETTLE BOILS

Dear Friends, All of us are endowed with one great gift-the blessing of an imagination. When life gets too hard for us, it offers an escape. In our imagination we weave all kinds of fond, impossible dreams, but the miracle is that, to our imaginations, they are real and capable of fulfilment. We all have our favourite little flights of fancy-something quite personal to ourselves-where we can soar and rise to heights that our own practical thinking selves may never achieve. It is a game of pretence, maybe, but a game that sustains us through the dark patches. I am going to confess my own special flight of fancy. I dream of the perfect places in the world where I would choose to live-if I had the choice. That dream of owning a tropic isle, removed from all the cares and responsibilities of a civil-

ised life. This, however, is not quite as fanciful as it reads. These days it is possible to pick up a little fertile isle with no more trouble than acquiring a house. Tahiti and Tonga both abound in pretty and healthy islands that always seem to be changing hands. Off New Caledonia, there is a perfect colony of islets, planted with pines and mostly unused. The happy hunting ground, however, appears to be off the eastern end of Papua. The islets stretch across the map for 400 miles, some of them 500 miles long-some 5,000 to 8,000 feet highand many of these are on the market. Life there could be idyllic. They have hot springs and geysers, gold mines (if you feel like a spot of work), coco-nut plantations, huge tropical forests, aflame with rare orchids and vividly coloured birds. They boast every kind of game fish, turtle, beche-de-mer, and dugong, Here you would live surrounded by beauty-free from care, dress problems, domestic troubles, and taxes. If you wanted to build a house, you could do so, and the cost, in food and money, would be under £20. Native labour out there is available at 10/- a month. If you desire a palace, it could be yours for a hundred pounds, If you cared to travel further afield, there is the sacred island of Miyajima in Japan. This is an Eden refuge, governed by laws intended to banish all suffering-even for beasts and birdsand to it come pilgrims from all over the East. In this tranquil little setthkement you see lovely homes surrounded by gardens of rare flowers. Here none has the right to be born or to die-there is no weeping or mourning -it is living epitomised. When people are sick, or when a woman is about to have a child, they are removed to one of the neighbouring islands till they regain their health of mind and body and can return to their enchanted Eden. You see, you can be as cosmopolitan as you like in your imagination-and roam the world at will. You might, for example, pick on Turkey; land (once) of veiled ladies and sultans, cupolas and minarets. In Turkey, one lives for the day, It is not an unusual sight to see a shopkeeper putting up his shutters quite early in the morning. No, it is not a holiday. A good sale has enabled him to make enough for the day-so why waste a day like this cooped up in his shop, when he can sit by the shore and watch the sea and sky, or smoke a pipe at the barber’s? And, well, after this-you wake up. Practical life is waiting for you with its exacting demands-and you stifle a sigh and close the little door on your imagination. Behind it is a sound like the surf thundering against some far coral reefbut even that grows faint. To very few do our dreams and fancies come true, but they are something we could not well do without. Yours cordially,

Cynthia