THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 144, 27 March 1942, Page 5

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

HERE was once a woman who, confronted with the task of amusing her. two small boys on a wet afternoon, decided that they would all make fudge together. Just when all was ready, the telephone went, and when she returned half an hour later, she found that the children had made mud pies with the sugar on the floor.. So she packed them off to bed. And the fudge was a great success for, as she said, "It was so peaceful making it without the children." This is the milder type of domestic discipline. The very modern parent would no doubt enter into the game of mud pies, and convert them by gentle stages back to fudge. But is this preferable to canings and corners or sending to bed? Mrs, Alston may perhaps give us her answer in her talk "Discipline in the Home," to be heard from 2YA on Monday, March 30, at 11 am. Reading in Bed Like Lord Elton, who is going to talk about it from 3YA on Monday forenoon, we like reading in bed, or at least, we like the jdea. It may simply be the fact of being in bed that we like, but we are convinced that literature is something like young Albert Ramsbottom’s medicine, and is best taken in a recumbent posture. Getting the feet up must assist the flow of blood to the brain, but the habit has aesthetic as well as physical advantages. How much more keenly can we appreciate the vast bulk of literature

built around the discomforts, trials, and tribulations of others when it contrasts with our own personal comfort and wellbeing. So much for the theory of the thing. In practice, we are no sooner happily settled down than our cara sposa inquires if we have remembered to put the cat out, or switch off the light in the kitchenette. Have we made sure that the windows are open in the children’s room? We haven’t. After a few such shivering expeditions, we crawl back to bed and have read perhaps two pages when there is a knock at the front door. It is the block-warden to tell us that a faint glow can be observed emanating from our bedroom windows. We put out the light and crawl into bed. No, opportunities for reading in bed are not what they were. But all the same we shall listen to Lord Elton, talking from another and more peaceful world. Lampenal Servitude Our gallant friend, Major F. H. Lampen, has been in so many tight and curious corners and has extricated himself from them so deftly that we are sure his admirers will experience no retrospective trepidation on learning that he will be telling them about " Six Months in a Penal Settlement," in talks from 2YA and 3YA next Thursday (April 2), Writing without prior knowledge, we cannot say if. Major Lampen has ever been compulsorily immured on St. Helena, has braved fever, floods, or fer-de-lances (should it be fers-de-lance?) in an escape from Martinique or, with other prisoners, has been pursued and peppered in Cayenne (another notorious hot spot). Maybe his

title is simply a sly way of describing a sepsonal visit to Tasmania for the applepicking, but whether he is indeed a Fugitive from a Chain Gang or simply the world wayfarer we have always imagined him to be, we have no doubt that he will be able to make life in a penal settlement sound much more interesting than it probably is to those who have to live it. Belles, Belles, Belles Easter, by one of the lunar mysteries of the calender, is almost upon us, and at Easter the thoughts of young men and maidens turn seriously to thoughts of love. Reliable observers inform us that the war has, if anything, increased the number of Easter marriages, and it has even been suggested that there will be few young soldiers who will return to

camp unmarried after Easter leave this year. In any case, hundreds-thousands, even-of young New. Zealand women are busying themselves with trousseaux and are scurrying round shops searching for a hundred and one things that are out of stock. For their benefit, .2ZB is following a pleasant seasonal ¢ustom of broadcasting a session for Easter brides. It is on the air at 1.30 p.m. from Monday to Friday. Unto the Hills "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help," says the Psalmist. Since they were composed on the Judean hills of t@ree thousand years ago, the Psalms have been a constant source of comfort and

courage. Some biographical incidents of famous people who have turned to the Psalms for inspiration are recounted in a new feature, "Songs of the Minstrel King", beginning this Thursday (March 26) at 2:45 p.m. from 2YA. The narrative is illustrated by recordings of the Psalms in various versions which have inspired classics of solo or choral music. The presentation to be heard this Thursday afternoon includes two dramatic historic incidents, one in 4th Century Caesarea, the other in the Kremlin "in Moscow, after Napoleon’s retreat in 1812. Fruitful Topic "The Culture of Subtropical Fruit," the title of a talk by A. M. W. Greig, 'to be heard from 1YA on Monday, March 30, at 7.15 p.m. gives promise of clinging oranges and shiny-leayed trees hanging with pale lemons, doorways framed with grapes, and tree tomatocs rapidly filling all the spare apple cases, and the family reeling at the prospect of demolishing large quantities of passion fruit. You have perhaps tried subtropical fruit culture already and found that your lemon tree just eked out a lingering, fruitless existence for three or four years, or that by dint of careful covering on frosty nights one shoot of your tree tomato survived into this year. So you may turn with expectancy not unmixed with hope to Mr. Greig’s talk, and if he cannot help you to make your particular wilderness blossom like a rose, it may at least ripen like a pawpaw. Musical Jester"The Jester at the Wedding" is given as the sub-title to "Music of Movement," the session from 3YA at 7.30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 1. In common experience the jester at the wedding is often

the chap who makes time stand still during his speech and we wonder whether he can be got to move at all as he churns out the endless platitudinous jokes that we have heard not only at our own wedding but at all our friends’ weddings too. So it is a relief to find that this particular jester apparently confines himself strictly to the music of the ballet suite by Coates, and that there is no danger of stale jokes, but only a gay little humoreske sandwiched between a march and minuet and a valse and caprice. Descent of Man i We don’t know whether to feel inspired or chastened by the subject on which Professor R. Lawson will speak in the Winter Course talk series from 4YA next Tuesday, The topic he has selected is "Social Evolution," and it must be admitted that the average man finds it difficult to detect any evolutionary tendency in wartime. As " Sagittarius " once wrote in the New Statesman: The long achievement of the mind, The Law’s majestic edifice, Arts tor man’s benefit designed, All time’s inventions come to this, That people with immortal souls Must crawl like beetles into holes. It is salutary, therefore, in these times to haye among us better-than-average men who can see beyond the immediate and who, speaking with authority, can assure us that retrogression is but episodic in the story of mankind. They, perhaps more than any others, can help deliver us from the body of this death.