THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 151, 15 May 1942, Page 5

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

HE wheel of fortune round it goes, and where it stops nobody knows, to quote Major ("Amateur Hour") Bowes. And it is equally true that on Wednesday, May 20, at 9.30 am., the shaking up of a lot of marbles in baskets and the extraction therefrom of several will bring a varying amount of fortune to people who have taken tickets in the "Spot of Luck" art union, Like the dustman, or demands from the income tax people, the drawing of art unions comes round month after month without very much comment or excitement-except, of course, on the part of the lucky people who receive the big prizes. But the Commercial Broadcasting Service is always there with a little microphone to pick up the noise of the rattling marbles and the calling of numbers and the names of the winners. So if you have a ticket, you’d better tune in to the ZB station on Wednesday morning. Versatility in the Arts Imagine John Jones writing in his diary, "Charming sermon on Acts XXIV. 24. On the way home from church I met that fellow Robinson, and as there was nobody about I slit his weasand and left him in the gutter. It was a very neat stroke. He hardly gurgled." Nowadays the ubiquity of the policeman rather curtails our throat-slitting talents, but in the 16th Century when artists prided themselves on having "More than one String to their Bows, or Versatility in

the Arts," a gurgleless coup de grace was an artistic accomplishment. At any rate, passages on the lines of the above abound in the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, who could carve you a goblet, play you a rondel, paint you a picture, run you out plans for a fortification, or run you through the gizzard with any man in Europe. The overture "Benvenuto Cellini," by Berlioz, may be heard from 3YA on Sunday, May 17, at 8.15 p.m, How to Save Sugar In these days of sugar rationing we might begin by asking ourselves (or, better still, someone who knows something about it) whether sugar is really

necessary. And the answer will probably be that sugar really is necessary because it provides the body with a readily available source of energy. Well, we should be inclined to begin at the other end of the vicious straight line, and concentrate on methods of saving energy rather than on methods of saving sugar. You may, for example, need to consume four ounces of sugar to get sufficient energy to walk four miles. (In our case the amount of sugar would be considerably higher.) But think how much more sensible it would be not to eat the sugar and to take a-bus or something, or perhaps just rest quietly at home with a light novel and a hot water bottle. And the same basic fallacy seems to be apparent in the A.C.E. talk "Sugar Saving Recipes" to be heard from 1YA and 3YA on Thursday afternoon, May 21, and from 2YA the following afternoon. When you take into consideration the amount of energy that you will need to expend on doing all that cooking, you may decide that ultimately you'll save more of your sugar ration if you spend a quiet afternoon on the living-room sofa instead. But it might be better to hear what the A.C.E. have to say. Chronic-But Convenient As the title of a "Health in the Home" talk, "Chronic Rheumatism" sounds a little depressing. Surely a title such as "How to cure rheumatism in the home" would be more encouraging than a bald statement of the fact that there is such a thing as rheumatism iri some homes. Not that there haven’t been occasions when a bout of rheumatism has come in quite useful; for example, when M.G.M. first began the filming of the Dr. Kildare pictures. Lionel Barrymore, who was to play the

part of Dr. Gillespie, was confined to a wheel-chair by a sudden attack of rheumatism, so the director had to have him that way in the film, and he was such a success, that he’s been kept there ever since. However, we agree that it’s. usually advisable to cure the complaint and listeners are advised to tune in to 1YA at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, May 19. Feathered Friends Bird-watchers may be divided into several classes. First of all there are the people who watch birds because they have nothing better to do or who, because they suffer from a kind of avitropism, can’t help watching birds. These are the people who are forever writing letters to the comic papers beginning "I am sure it will interest a wide circle of your readers to know that yesterday I observed a_ tartan-crested clodhopper building its nest in an abandoned gibus. In seventy-five years of bird-watching, I have never, etc." Then the amateur gardener, having learned that though the net may vainly be spread in sight of the bird, the lawnseed never is, must also be classed as an inveterate bird-watcher, and to these two another important class has recently been added. If you observe a hungryeyed individual staring fixedly across the duck-pond at the zoo, he is probably a duck-hunter who can’t get a licence or a pheasant-stalker who has lost his

way. Treat such human flotsam with care, for the war has frustrated their libidos and ‘such men are dangerous. But by far the most important class of bird-watcher is made up of those people who are sagacious enough to see that when it comes to a question of living harmoniously together and enjoying life the unfeathered have a lot to learn from the feathered bipeds, and possibly this is the kind of bird-watching which will be dealt with in the talk from 2YA next Monday forenoon, Mere Nobodies We're told it’s very confusing for a body to meet a body coming through the Rye, but then think how much more embarrassing it would be for a body to meet a Nobody coming through the Rye, though in that case of course there should be no doubt in any lassie’s mind as to the right course of action. But then Scotland isn’t the same as London, despite the fact that there are such a

lot of Scotsmen in both places, and if you meet a Nobody in London you're ‘perfectly at liberty to take him to your heart. Actually we imagine that London, like other cities, is a rather difficult place to see Nobody in, although butlers and parlour maids have been known to tell callers that the Master is seeing Nobody. But in spite of the difficulties she must have had in collecting her material, the title of Mrs. Alison Grant Robinson’s next talk (2YA next Wednesday morning, May 20) is "My London: Nobodies," Her Old Kentucky Home Having dealt. with life in a London suburb last Monday, Doreen E. Dolton continues her domiciliary series from 3YA next week (Monday, 11.0 a.m.) with "T’ve Lived in Kentucky," in which she has the assistance of Dr. Helen Field. We don’t know how far Miss Dolton and/or Dr. Field had to plunge into the deep South to find a roof to put over their heads (that they had to go so far just shows you what the housing problem has become nowadays) but we do hope that the sun shone bright on it, if only to keep the affair in character and pro- vide them with a theme song. There are a lot of things we’d like to know about Kentucky. Are these Kentucky hill-billies we see in the movies all they make up to be, for example, and what's the difference between shortenin’ and shortbread? A little light on our blackout please Miss Dolton! ‘