THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 67, 4 October 1940, Page 6

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

OU don’t realise until you go into the matter how many steps there are in making a home, and how many experts and processes are involved. On this matter 1YA is to give some advice. For the Winter Course series on Thursdays a group of talks has been planned which will begin with the choice of style for the house and the planning of the rooms, and end with the financing of the venture; possibly some listeners will think this should come first. Professor Knight, head of the school of Architecture at Auckland University College, is to lead off. Building materials, the equipment of the home, and interior decoration will be dealt with. The first talk is on October 3 (Thursday of this week), and the second is to be given on October 10, at 7.35 p.m. How it Started Who among all the millions who have seen plays performed has ever thought that someone must have had this idea first; this idea of making characters walk on a stage and speak a story? Who, among the hundreds of thousands who have seen or read plays by all the dramatists from Shakespeare to Shaw and the authors of scripts for Fred and Maggie, ever thinks to look back to the open-air theatres of Greece, hundreds of years before the Birth of Christ, and re-

member that the Greeks also had words for it? Perhaps they did not quite attain the artistic heights of the radio serial, but one of them, Euripides by name, did not do so badly, when we consider that he was just beginning. Professor T. D. Adams will discuss his work from 4YA at 7.40 p.m. on Tuesday, October 8. " Avay vith Melancholy " "Avay vith melancholy," as Mr: Weller said, or should have said; for at 7.30p.m. on Friday, October 11, 2YA Wellington will witness the joyous advent. of "The Gloom Chasers" to drive out black thoughts of war, famine, income tax and That Man. Right merry

company they are, too, these depressiondispellers, numbering such stout eggs, beans and crumpets among them as Norman Long with his jokes and his piano, Jack Warner ("Let me take you away from all this, li’l girl"), Cyril ("refeened") Fletcher, and _ others. When this 26 minutes of fun and frivolity draws to a close, we shouldn’t have a single worry to curse ourselves with.

How it Looks Until we hear Mrs. Stephen Elsom talking with John Citizen from 3YA on Wednesday, October 9, at 7.35 p.m., in the Winter Course Session, we can’t be sure exactly how things look to a commercial artist. But the difference between a commercial artist and the other sort probably lies in the fact that the artist (for example) offers the willow tree as a tree while the commercial artist offers the bathing beauties in the water beneath it as a recommendation for tooth‘paste, face cream, cigarettes, patent medicines, or any of the other thousands of things advertised these days. Of course that’s only one point of view. The speakers in " Things As Seen by a Commercial Artist" will offer may others.

October in the Garden October in the garden is a lovely month, and lovelier than ever in that place of many gardens, Christchurch. From Marshlands where the onions sprout, to Heathcote where the fruit trees blossom, every home will have its plot showing green with new growth. But the reputation of Christchurch in the world of amateur gardeners was not easily come by. Even golf has to suffer for the sake of an hour in the evenings after work when the spring growth is coming away. Even the movies have to be missed when 3YA’s garden expert is on the air. T. D. Lennie will discuss "October in the Garden," from 3YA on Monday, October 7, at 7.10 p.m.

Ways of Welcome Entertaining human contacts will be remembered by Major F. H. Lampen for the series he is beginning from 2YA at 10.45 a.m. on Thursday, October 10, with a chat on welcomes. There was the time, for example, when the young soldier was leading an advance guard through an Indian district and found himself welcomed with due ceremony by the local priests, complete with mile-long trumpets, sweetmeats, coco-nut milk, and all the rest. He rose to the occasion, and escaped in time when he found it was all intended for the C.O., following behind. There was another welcome in a South Island town famous for its receptions to visitors under the jovial aegis of a Mayor whose memory will be immortal for his hearty refusals of snobbery. But that’s a story you should hear for yourself. " Good-byes" and " Snags" will be other titles in the series. The Press -One of the first things an Englishman does when he plants a colony is to set up a newspaper. It runs a dead-heat, so to speak, with a race meeting. As we might suppose, journalism in the early days of New Zealand was a calling of peculiar difficulties. News from the other parts came by mail, and an editor might have to drop his pen in the middle of a leading article and row out to an

English ship for precious newspaper files. No one had time to run an Agony Column. Politics were the great interest, and editorials hit very hard and often with a personal twist astonishing to us to-day. It will be covered in the " Background of New Zealand" series in a talk from 2YA, on October 7. The speaker will be Dr. Guy H. Scholefield, who was a journalist before he became Parliamentary Librarian, It’s Big German bombers could do a million pounds worth of damage every night for a year, said J. M. Keynes the other day, and "we should still not lose more than four per cent. of our buildings or more than could be restored in a couple of years." London is a big place, he said, and could take it. Just how big London really is it is difficult for us to realise. The entire population of New Zealand could enter the city and many of its inhabitants would not know about the influx. And not many of the visitors

would know where they were. London is a strange place for beginners, as Ngaio Marsh will show when she talks" on "London for Beginners," from 1YA on Sunday, October 6, at 3.15 p.m. Perhaps there is no one very keen about beginning to see London at the moment, but everyone who can should listen to Miss Marsh in the confident hope that her information will come in handy a little later. Tyrer with Orchestra . Since Leon de Mauny started the-Wel-lington Symphony Orchestra over ten years ago, it has provided rich fare for music lovers in the capital city, and, through broadcasting, to listeners all over the country. Many world-famed visiting artists have played with the orchestra: Percy Grainger, Joseph Szigeti, Benno Moiseiwitch and others. Many symphonies and lesser works have been given their first performances in this country under its aegis. The programme for the concert on Tuesday evening, October 8 (which 2YA_ will broadcast) is as excellent as any yet presented. Andersen Tyrer will play two of the great piano concertos-the Grieg, and the Rachmaninoff second-and among the orchestral items are "William Tell" Overture and. works by Tchaikovski, Glazounov, and Grieg.