THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 149, 1 May 1942, Page 5

THINGS TO COME

A Kun Through The Programmes

HE word adventure has a schoolboy tang. Who has not crouched behind a rock, pushed through ice and’ snow, suffered torturing thirst on the desert; hunted heads of head hunters, and pursued the missing clue in and out of a murder mystery? On Tuesday, May 5, listeners may hear Valerie Corliss give her next talk in the series " Little Adventures in Music." Perhaps some. chord will come crashing through the fugue and leap upon the weary treble as it wends its way through the tangled undergrowth of point and counterpoint, Then there is her sub-title " Playing on Chopin’s Piano." Though we should like to imagine Miss Corliss burgling Chopin’s house in order to steal one crashing, slumber destroying chord, we suspect that her experience was less melodramatic, " Coptic " Is Cryptic Listeners who study the 2ZB programmes must for some time have been sorely puzzled by an item on Monday afternoon entitled "Afternoon Tea with Peter Whitchurch, followed by the Museycoptic Quiz." Afternoon tea with Peter Whitchurch is straightforward enough, and no doubt there are plenty who jump at the invitation. But "Museycoptic" presents a problem. According to reports from 2ZB, the quiz part is also plain sailing, a pianist playing four bars of a tune which the competitor is asked to mame, If he succeeds he is awarded six points; if he fails, eight bars are played

(reward three points) and so on, That’s all very well, but there is mystery about the implication of the "coptic" part. It smacks of Abyssinia and the Lion of Judah and all that. Perhaps Mr. Whitchurch will rend the veil? Ro-mance Romance, whether you accent it on the first or second syllable, or on both, or simply breathe it out in a voice husky with asthma, is a feeling which you entertain about things (or persons) of which (or whom) you have little or no experience. That is one of the Facts of Life. And the Romance of Spelling,

which is the subject of a broadcast from 4YA next Wednesday (May 6), at 1040 am. is no exception to the general rule. As long as nobody knew anything about it, that is, until the advent of universal compulsory primary education, the pupil’s word was literally as good as the master’s and the spelling class was as much a free-for-all as a West Coast Rugby match, Even Francis Bacon would not have got very far in the orthography stakes, and as for his doppelganger, Wi:l Shakespeare (Shakspear, Shakespere, or Shagsper) he couldn’t even get rid of a second-best bed without coming out in a rash of intrusive vowels and consonants. Happy days! But ask a school teacher, or a censor, or a proof-reader if there is any romance left in spelling to-day and then step swiftly aside to avoid the slipstream, Still, there must be a few people left who aren’t school teachers, censors, or proof-readers, and no doubt these few will be able to listen unfettered by prejudice, Band of Hope and Glory We English love music, at any rate we know a tune when we hear one. In fact we always believe in calling a tune a tune, and why shouldn’t we when we pay the piper, though for that matter who wants to pay a piper anyway, most of them ate Scotch and if they weren't paid they wouldn’t pipe. Of course that wouldn’t solve the problem of the daily pipers which are in their way much more formidable organs and have little in common with the Scotch except in their agitation for a free press, stop me and press one, so to speak. And here definitely we must disagree about this free press business, after all it is bound to mean poorer workmanship, and when

one’s trousers are involved it pays one to be careful. Not that this affects the Scotch much because one cannot take the breeks off a Highlander, nemo me impune whatever it is, as they say in North Britain, However, we have said enough to show that we English do love music and do know what we like and we are sure you too will like The English Love Music, a comedy to be broadcast by 1YA next Sunday evening. Naval Occasions From such subjects as " Pets on Shipboard" and "Women in the Engineroom" (not to be confused one with the other), Mrs, O. J. Gerard passes on Friday, May 15 (2YA, 11.0 a.m.) to the important topic of " Naval Launchings." Many curious traditions surround these ceremonials. Warships, for example, are never launched without benefit of clergy, and an endeavour is always made to have the vessel finally speéded down the ways by some appropriate person. In the illustration, the new battleship in the background has just been launched by the old battle-cruiser in the foreground, and so on. And then there is the matter of the champagne. We notice in the papers the other day that an Australian naval vessel had been christened with a bottle of Australian wine, but the Motherland is not in the fortunate position of having home-grown

champagne. We understand that whisky is, however, being used with splendid results, particularly on Clydeside. It was feared at first, that this departure from tradition would lead to serious disorders and even regrettable incidents, but the only result has been the happy one of considerably speeding up construction. Whereas, in the champagne era, the keelplate of the succeeding vessel was not laid until its predecessor had left the ways, the new plate is now slid under the other vessel before the launch in order to conserve (for the benefit of the plate-layers) the contents of the shattered whisky bottle. ~ Adventurous Women While men have trekked through regions of ice or hacked their way through topical jungles, most .women have stayed home darning the socks and keeping the home fires burning. But Margaret Johnston is giving a series of talks from 2YA on women who were not content to be mere home-

dwellers or camp-followers-women who, like Rosita Forbes, Freya Stark, and Gertrude Bell, explored in the Middle East; who ventured like Ella Maillard across Central Asia; or who, like Mary Kingsley disguised in the black bonnet and cape of the Victorian lady, pushed as trader and ethnologist up the rivers of West Africa. The next talk in the series to be heard next Saturday, May 9, at 11 a.m., will tell of the travels of Lady Hester Stanhope in Syria. Forty Years On Life, as Mae West has observed it (or perhaps it was Ella Wheeler Wilcox) begins at forty. By that time one’s mother-in-law has gone back home, the children can usually be trusted to wash behind their ears without parental supervision, and one is ripe and ready to enjoy life. Maturity means mellowness and urbanity, and with man as with wine, age should bring sweetness. As the popular song points out, the sweetest music comes from an old violin that has been well played upon, and (we might add) there is nothing so comfortable as an old chair that has been well sat upon. It follows then that whether you feel like the true, the blushful Hippocrene, or simply well sat upon like the old arm-chair, you should, at forty, be ready to drink life to the lees, and like it. If you aren’t and don’t, we can but advise you to tune in to the talk "For Those Over 40," from 1YA on Tuesday forenoon next.