Listening While I Work (30)

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 256, 19 May 1944, Page 25

Listening While I Work (30)

; By '

Materfamilias

ce ARELESS Listening Costs Valves" runs an advertisement in an English periodical, and above this caption is a sketch of careless listening--Mum minding a screaming infant, Sis talking on the telephone, and the boys having a scrap on the floor while the puppy yaps at them cheerfully from under the bed. "You have just heard Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" announces the radio. As chance had it, I read in another English paper for the same week that a large proportion of the BBC programmes were "background" music, not intended for close listening, but only to be heard as a background accompani-

ment to work. I am compelled to take my English informant’s word for it as far as BBC programmes are concerned, but with New Zealand programmes it would be true on the whole to say that we ate intended to listen for the greater part of the day. The NBS expects me to have my day’s work done considerably ahead of my usual schedule. As for the ZB’s, from the time that Aunt Daisy starts at 9.0 we have a pretty steady succession of serials which we may not listen to at all, but which certainly are not background. The NBS gives nearly an hour more background, but from 10.10 a.m, until nearly 12.0 the programmes demand attention. For there ate few things more annoying than to hear talking coming from another room or going on anywhere when you cannot pay attention to it. I realise for the first time the virtue of some of the programmes that have irritated me most. As I never have bothered much about details that I knew I would not have to remember and that could never be of the slightest value to

me, I forget them as fast as I hear them. But I have always or nearly always enjoyed the musical illustrations. In other words, ali this time I have imagined that I have been sucking the sugar coating and throwing away the pill. Well, perhaps I have, but if it hadn’t been for the pill, I might have thrown the sugar coating away as well, or not noticed that it was there. For the danger of too much background music is that one is tempted to treat all music as background, to listen from another room or while gardening or even while reading a book or writing a letter. When the NBS hang musical records together with a thread, they do at least ensure that those who are listening, are listening. * * * STATION 2YA does not run many serials during the day, but when it does, the time is a little odd-10.45 a.m. on Mondays and Saturdays. The housewife who may have time to listen on a mid-week day is usually too busy with shopping or cooking to listen on Saturday. On the other hand, the working woman who is away all the week and is home on Saturday gets alternate episodes only; though that often does not matter. With many serials it is an advantage. One can dip into a serial as into a book, and it will have the charm of a puzzle. But I was brought up to think that skipping books was almost as bad as skipping the collection plate on Sundays, and skipping serials-if serials are to be taken seriously-is even worse, because you cannot go back and read what you have missed. I cannot myself take serials seriously, thgugh I develop quite an affection for one at times. I have, for example, been quite transported with the blood and thunder melodrama of Jezebel’s Daughter. Belonging to a generation that had already discarded Wilkie Collins, I found this new. Fortunately, I knew my Bible well enough to feel sute that Jezebel would be -thrown to the dogs. * Pa * HE world of Jezebel’s Daughter is as far removed from our New Zealand scene as is the world of the new 2YA serial which replaces it, Tradesmen’s Entrance; and yet, whereas I was amused by the former, I rather | resent the latter. There are few New Zealanders who have outgrown their abstract love for England, but it is not | the England which keeps its front door for the rich and the well born and a mean little back door for tradesmen and working people that we like best. The great families with a house full of "servants" waiting on a handful of "masters" is, after all, a very small part of the real England and a part rapidly disappearing. Moreover, it is no part of New Zealand. How many New Zealand houses have servants’ quarters and tradesmen’s entrances and butlers and footmen (or these days cooks and housemaids)? It is quite amusing to visit the kitchen of the great house of Tradesmen’s Entrance. It is a little world of human beings happier, we are expected to believe, with their left-over of cold chicken than their employers with their oysters and grouse. We already, in two episodes, have plenty of hints that all is not well above stairs. But though I expect jokes to be cracked and morals to be drawn for my benefit, I still would prefer not to be reminded too much of this particular aspect of life. in England. Last war went some way towards abolishing it. This war may com-' plete the process. ;