THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 106, 4 July 1941, Page 6

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

F present tendencies are any indication, it will not be long before nutrition, diet and kindred subjects usurp the place of the weather in conversation wherever two or three AngloSaxons are gathered together. Next week (Tuesday, at 7.35 p.m.) 4YA will bring another authority, Dr. Elizabeth Gregory, newly-appointed head of the Home Science faculty at Otago University, to the microphone. At this early date, we do not know whether she will tell us how to keep that schoolgirl waistline or how Providence and proteins shape our ends, rough hew them how we will. She may be more interested in mathematical than in feminine figures, but whether her text is "Guns before butter," or "Let us eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow we diet," it is a safe wager that she will have plenty of listeners. Nutrition is News. Burbling of Baubles We notice that Oliver Cromwell is down for discussion in an episode of Magnificent Heritage from Station 4ZB next Wednesday morning. Not having any advance information: as to the content of the programme, we shall be more than a little interested (having Trish blood in us and an inbred dislike of tyrants) to see in what colours he is presented. (Maybe the reference to "tyrant" was out of order; maybe, after all, one’s very own tyrant is merely a statesman of rather more than usual strength of character.) In any event, it -----

pains us to have to confess that, owing to the usual revulsion against schoolboy history, we retain only a confused jumble of impressions of Cromwell, chief among them the "more than usual strength of character" tag and an angry injunction to someone or other to "remove that

| bauble" from the House of Commons, This bauble episode has always intrigued us, and some day we intend agitating for a new ceremony, the Removal of the Bauble, to be introduced at the opening of every session of Parliament. It might have a chastening effect on our legislators. (P.S. What is wrong with this picture? Answer: Cromwell didn’t wear a moustache, Or, did he?) ; Seasonal We wonder if Professor Adams in his session on July 11 will present the famous Winter is icumen in Hlude sing Tishoo! Froste freezeth, nosie sneezeth, All ysicy noo. — Legge tremble after bath, Finger turneth blue, Winter is icurnen in Hlude sing Tishoo! His usual reading session at 9.30 that evening is to be devoted on this occasion to "Winter Poems," and, judging by the weather reports, Dunedin listeners may anticipate an appropriate atmosphere.

Furnishing Is Fun Evelyn Gardiner has been acting in light opera now for many years, and she seems to have absorbed much of the Gilbert and Sullivan sense of humour that makes fun of all our worries and troubles. Even so, we are struck with the paradox of her title "Furnishing is Fun." It may be fun for the housewife to let her imagination run away with ‘her husband’s pocket money and never come back, or to play the little Adolf ordering us to put the piano over there -no, not over there, over there-but we are not amused. We’d much rather sit tight in an already furnished flat than soberly parade the streets overloaded with the booty of our pet bargainhunter. However, we will be pleased if Evelyn Gardiner can show us the funny side of things when she speaks from 1YA on Wednesday, July 9. Burnt Cork If there is one thing more than another missing from modern entertainment, it is burnt cork. Burnt -cork turned any indifferent singer into a "Nigger Minstrel," participating in a real old-time show with "Mistah John-

son" calling for a solo or a castenet dance or a hoary old chestnut of a joke, and with "Oh, Susannah" as a grand finale from "the whole company," all ten of them. There used to be a legend that the best results came from. burnt cork mixed with stale stout, the stale liquor lending a beautiful glossy finish. But we fear that even a group with such a genuine-sounding name as the Kentucky Minstrels doesn’t bother with the magic touch of burnt cork for the microphone. But Doris Arnold, under whose auspices the Kentucky Minstrels now function, is a compére with abundant radio experience and a wide knowledge of music, and this combination will. be worth listening to from 1YA on Monday, July 7. At Short Notice When we noticed in the programmes that 2YA have reserved a period on Fridays at 8.40 p.m. for a session of the latest music to be received from overseas, we asked our artist for an illustration. His first suggestion for this item, which is sub-titled "Music that cannot be announced in advance," was, alas, a misunderstanding. We didn’t mean that kind of music. His second suggestion does convey the idea of short notice, but

we scarcely believe that members of 2YA’s programme staff arrive in the announcer’s room in quite such a hurry as he here depicts. This programme is, however, something of a lucky dip. New recordings are constantly being ordered from the overseas studios, but, owing to shipping delays, their arrival cannot be planned. 2YA is therefore doing the next best thing in presenting a weekly selection from the latest records as soon as they arrive, and, despite the suggestion of haste, this is a session to be savoured, Tucker-Box at Gundagai How are you getting on with Dad and Dave? Are you up to the famous libel action yet? Dad and Dave is being presented over several NBS stations, but some centres are a little behind others in the development of the story. There is a point where Alf, who is a poet and works on Dad’s farm, writes a song which is heard over the radio at Snake Gully. However, Mabel and her father, Bill Smith, take exception to the verse: My Mabel waits for me underneath the bright blue sky, : : Where the dog sits on the tucker-box five miles from Gundagai,

So she sues Alf for £5,000, which, of course, carries the story on for a few more episodes. The interesting thing is that there is a place where the dog sits on the tucker-box five miles from Gundagai. It is a memorial carved from a tree at the place where Henry Lawson camped during his last tramp round Australia, and it supposedly marks where his dog waited on his tucker-box. Shavian May we draw your attention to an item to be broadcast by 1YA on Sunday evening .next? It is a play this time, The Dark Lady of the Sonnets, and is written by a young Irish dramatist by the name of Shaw-George Shaw, or to be more precise, Mr. George B. Shaw. At any rate it is a name which we (and Mr. Shaw) venture to prophesy may come to Mean Something. In case some of our readers may have already come across Mr. Shaw’s work, we might point out that The Dark Lady is distinct from The Black Girl, whose adventures Mr. Shaw has also chronicled. The Dark Lady, in point of fact, figured in the sonnets and private life of another dramatist, known variously (and with varying justification) as William Shakespeare (or Shakespere), Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam and by one or two other aliases. He is likely to be best remembered by the part he plays in Mr. Shaw’s works, or so Mr. Shaw thinks,