THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 182, 18 December 1942, Page 2

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

HE singing of Christmas carols in Yugoslav countries has always been an organised and serious affair involving much hard work and very little sleep. On Christmas Day this year the young Yugoslav people living in Auckland will broadcast from 1YA a programme of their Christmas carols and a greeting to Yugoslavs throughout New Zealand. Professor Moor-Karoly of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, will conduct the choir and the Rev. Father Marinovich will speak about the Christmas customs of a typical Yugoslav village. We understand that he will tell us, among other things, about the "Badjak", the huge log that burns from Christmas Day to New Year’s Day, so corresponding with the English Yule log; about the strewing of the floors with laurel leaves on Christmas eve-to make sure that the floors will be thoroughly swept on Christmas morning; and about the church-going and feasting and toasting and singing that lasts into Christmas night. On Boxing Day We have spent so many of our brief Christmas holidays suffering either from bad weather or exhaustion (or both), that we are hardly surprised to find that A. P. Harper’s "Bushcraft" talk at 7.30 p.m. from 2YA on Boxing Day deals with these topics. It is doubtful if Mr. Harper will discuss the post-prandial exhaustion which is the common Boxing Day experience, but we look forward to his hints on how to Face up to the Weather and we hope that armed with waterproof coats, boots, and the simplest of picnic lunches we may do penance for Christ- — mas over-indulgence. Green Noises The garden expert at 3YA is going to try himself out at mimicry, having, after long experience, learned to distinguish between animal noises and vegetable noises. Or so we gather from the anmouncement that on Monday he will speak about "Garden Calls." We imagine he has learned to distinguish between the bark of an oak and the bark of an elm, both quite different sounds from the hoot of the owl or the bray of the ass. And we take it that he has read some of the books in the running brooks and has heard the sermons in the stones that Shakespeare used to run on about, But no doubt it’s only a matter of training, like interpreting the Stones that Cry Out. From The Movies When the cinema can be the means of introducing to the public such compositions as Richard Addinsell’s Warsaw Concerto, a programme entitled "Music from the Movies" (scheduled for 3YA at 7.30 p.m. on Tuesday, December 22) may well attract the middling highbrow as well as the low. But since Louis Levy and his Gaumont British Orchestra are officiating on this occasion, the lowbrows can expect to be treated to a good ten minutes of light and bright entertainment. : . Romance and Digestion We have no difficulty in agreeing with the poets that Romance belongs properly to the dewy springtide, whereas Christ-

mas is essentially the season for the gratification of the pleasures of the body rather than of the soul. However Judith Terry appears to take the opposite view in her talk from 1YA this Friday even-

ing (December 18) on "My Romantic Christmas." But, mistletoe or no mistletoe, surely on der tag itself few bodies can neglect their mighty task of digesting the Christmas goose in order to pay serious attention to the promptings of Romance.

That Takes Me Back! "Jumble Sale’-play by Grace Janisch from 2YA on Sunday, December 27 -takes us ’way back to the time when Mother was sec. (hon.) of the branch of. the P.W.M.U. in a southerly direction, and we all had to make things like anything for the jumble sale. Grace Janisch has written a funny play about this subject, because it’s the sort of subject — _

that makes people want to write funny plays. But we hope listeners will try to remember that all sorts of things that are not funny are going on — people’s ambitions are being trampled under the stout black shoes of the judges, who decide that someone’s pikelets, butter, eyelet work, or marrows are better than someone else’s; the peg-bag made by X is just not sold, and the oven dusters made by Y are; the afternoon-tea stall is open at 1.30 p.m., and all the food is eaten by 2.20, before the Minister’s wife (president of the P.W.M.U.), and Mother have had one single moment for a cup of tea; and worst of all, Mother has had to buy five of the six pincushions we had made without any help whatever. Curiosity When the 2YA programme organiser announces that on Tuesday next at 11.15 a.m. Something New will disturb the ether, we either do not believe him or we feel that we should be lacing up our shoes and clutching our copy paper as we rush out to report the event. But listeners are not all reporters and we must not kill honest curiosity in ade vance, Under The Skin Kipling decided, probably on what was at best circumstantial evidence, that the Colonel’s lady and Judy O’Grady were sisters under the skin. With something like the same boldness the advocates of closer relations with Russia may use Moussorgsky and the Flea to prove that the New Zealander and the Russian are also brothers under the skin, and if they are wrong it is not easy to understand how Chaliapin amd Oscar Natzke both express it in song with the same realism. Listen to Oscar next Tuesday evening at 7.50 and then ask yourself. Es