TEA, CAKES and CONVERSATION

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 115, 5 September 1941, Page 14

TEA, CAKES and CONVERSATION

How To Entertain Soldiers On Leave?

-Asks

K.

S.

WICE recently I have entertained in my home a soldier on leave, but although I am most anxious to be hospitable, I have found it a little difficult to know the best thing to do. The boys were strangers to me, and their tastes may well have run to the Bright Life, for all I knew, but they both said,that just being in the home was O.K. by them, and as they seemed sincere, I had to believe them. What do other people do to entertain utter strangers? I ASK this question because it is one of the things that puzzle me. I believe myself to be normally gregarious and what is called "a good mixer," and over the years we have entertained many hundreds of people in our home, But because of my upbringing and early home life, the type of friends I have made and the routine of life I have drifted into, I know quite well that I am a bit moth-eaten. I don’t go to wild parties, race parties, dancing parties, drinking parties, stag parties, or indeed

any of the places where hard liquor and soft words are the main ingredients of the entertainment. I’m a suburbanite. I go home at 5 o'clock. I dig in the cabbage garden all day Saturday. I take an interest in the state of the children’s footwear, and the discount due on the electric light account, and as soon as dinner is over I just naturally put on an apron to do the washing up. In a word, I belong to an older and staler generation, and my ideas on entertaining are definitely out of the.Ark, Not infrequently, of course, I invite someone to come along to my home for the evening, and merely for the sake of any future historians studying social customs in the twentieth century, I set down here what happens. O start with, the callers or subjects or whatever you like to call them, are friends, or friends of friends, or at any rate members of what in New Zealand constitutes the middle class. In number they are not miore than five or six, and more usually just a married couple not too unlike ourselves. They know to arrive about 8 p.m. If there are ladies, my wife takes them into the bedroom and they leave their hats, coats, and bags on our best bedspread. Meantime I have taken the men into the sitting room, offered them a smoke with the concomitant "How’s business these days?" and we have got as far as "Oh! fair enough: can’t complain" when the ladies join us. There is a good deal of pushing round of chairs before everyone is settled, and then (I’ve noticed it hundreds of times, so I know) the conversation flags just a trifle. It may be, and usually is, rescued by a reference to the weather or the war news, and then gradually it warms up. The talk starts. The entertainment offered by me is under way. We all talk. We talk about all sorts of subjects, and in an hour or so there will be supper, but that’s all there is to it. We haven’t a drop of liquor in the house-we never have. Cards as a medium of passing the time are not suggested. There are no instruments, so we can’t make music, even assuming that anyone is able to, which usually is doubtful. The entertainment we offer is talk around the fire, and our callers either know and expect this, or just have to put up with it. Now what do we talk about? Just the everyday subjects that fill the average middle-class mind in wartime — a little politics (if you are more or less

sure of the other party); a good deal of surmise about the war; a little film gossip; books; local personalities; local affairs like changes in the tram and bus timetable; and (a fairly recent innovation but now well established) comment on something heard on the radio. About a quarter to ten my wife finds some excuse to go and put the kettle on, and wheels ih on the dinner-waggon tea, buttered scones or pikelets, and iced cakes for supper. About 10.30 one of the couples say they are afraid they must be moving, as they have a long way to

go, and, if this is Auckland, there then ensues a long discussion on the rival merits of changing at Newmarket or walking along Karangahape Road, depending on the suburb. My wife and I see them off at the front door to " You must come back and see us some timeI'll give you a ring next week"; and then we go to bed. BELIEVE it or not, as Mr. Ripley would say, "entertainment" of this type is offered by me, and reciprocated (apparently cheerfully) by my friends, in the Dominion of New Zealand in this year of grace, 1941. In fact, I'll go further, and say that however horrifyingly dull it might strike you, this sort of thing goes on among quite a lot of people all over New Zealand every night in the week. I’m so sunk in it that, not only did I not know any other, but I quite enjoy this. Speaking strictly for myself, I think homely, folksy talk round a blazing wood and coal fire is an institution of some real merit. The friendly undercurrent of sound and movement from the fire, the feeling of " belonging," of being one in a community of interest, the rise and fall of conversation as it drifts carelessly from point to point all round the compass, happy laughter and the voices of friends over the clatter of supper dishes-I like all that. But that’s only my opinion. What worries me is what to do for soldiers 6n leave. I’m anxious to be hospitable to the boys, but what’s the right thing to do?