THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 196, 26 March 1943, Page 2

THINGS TO COME

A kun Through The Programmes

E have all heard doors closed with such a bang that the noise could be heard all over the house, but when Nora, the heroine of Ibsen’s Doll’s House, left her home and closed the door, the closing of the door was "heard all round the world." It was the signal for all other repressed housewives to do some door-banging, too, but fortunately, though most heard the bang, they did not all follow Nora, or there would have been a_ revolution beyond the dreams of red-bearded and red-shirted revolutionaries. But if ‘you want to know in a nutshell what Ibsen was after without the bother of reading him, listen to the 4ZB session "Dramatisation of the Classics" next Wednesday at 8.5 p.m. Cuckoo! "The problem of the cuckoo," a scientific journal announced a few weeks ago "has been brought a step nearer to solution by the publication of an authoritative treatise by the doyen of British ornithologists, Edward Charles Stuart Baker, C.LE., O.B.E., F.S.Z., M.B.O.U,, J.P." But what is the problem of the cuckoo-why it cuckoos, or how? In our innocence we thought it was the first, but to Mr. Baker it is the second: How does the cuckoo get its eggs into the nest? Some nests, of course, are easy, but others are in a hole in a tree, or have an aperture too small to admit Mrs, Cuckoo herself. Yet they do not baffle her, and she, if we may believe our reviewer, has baffled men of science from the beginning of time. What then will they say to the Wedding of the Cuckoo and the Hen, a mystery that will be unfolded musically to anyone who listens to 1YA at 8.50 p.m. when? On April the First! But we are not fooling you unless Uccellini is fooling us. And if he is, he has already fooled the whole musical world, including the Decca tecording company. Liberty Out of Liberties . The difference between the Great Charter of the school-books and the Great Charter of fact is the difference between singular and plural. No one won liberty from King John; but those who had some liberties extracted a few more from him. It could almost be argued that the Charter is a reactionary document, since what the barons really wanted was to recover the privileges they had enjoyed during the long absences from England of King Richard. But no man looks a gift harse in the mouth, especially if it is a good horse. The Charter was a good gift-for our own nation, and for the whole worldand if you disagree, tune in to 1ZM at 7.35 p.m. on Friday, March 26, for the first of a series of talks by G. A. Naylor on the Foundations of Liberty. Other talks will follow at weekly inbut a discussion on political liberty that ignored the Charter would be like a picture of a bull-fight in which the bulls had been de-horned. Good Hunting What Solomon could not understand no Scotsman will, pretend to know; when the subject is wooing,

But the motto of the Scots is to keep on trying, however "lang the coortin." And Solomon had no bagpipes. He may have had a harp, but try a twang against a skirl in one of Scotland’s wild northeasters. No. If "flat-footed Jean" is your quarry, you use a weapon worthy of the game, as our artist knows, and if Tom

Kinniburgh and Company do not support us at 1YA next Monday night, Scotland is slipping. So interrupt your bridge or your book to find out. The answer comes at ten-22.00 hours.

Is it Possible? It seems fairly obvious to us that the controllers of the For My Lady session are preparing an affirmative answer to their question "Can Women Be Funny?" scheduled to be asked from 4YA on Monday next. Because surely no one would dare to ask that question in a session specially prepared for women and then answer it with a pointed NO. We expect they intend to bring forward the gentle funniness of Jane Austen and the probably unconscious funniness of Mrs, Beaton. Perhaps they will talk about E. M. Delafield in Punch-and, we must admit, there may be many ----.

. women writing those funny things in Punch over initials that are translated only once a year. And perhaps they will quote Stella Gibbons. And perhaps they will recall scenes from the pictures of the two Gracies — Fields and Allen, especially that one in which Allen, asked by Burns to look at the newspaper to see what date it was, said "Can’t tell, It’s yesterday's." Anyway, we'll be quite interested to see how far they agree or disagree with our own opinion.