BIRD'S EYE or WORM'S EYE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 269, 18 August 1944, Page 12

BIRD'S EYE or WORM'S EYE

What Should Our Visitors See?

(Written for "The Listener"

by

D.N.

D.

strenuous but secluded lives in the suburbs often lack time and facility to express our gratitude to those able scouts whom The Listener sends out to interview celebrities we cannot meet, and to paint their portraits for us in skilful prose. Last month when your "A.A." gave us that vivid picture of Sergeant Denvir we read and marvelled, and wished for a while that we could join the Partisans, or that we could write like that, but ultimately we went on with our own jobs. Then we read "S.S." on Dr. Edith Summerskill, and this has moved us to action, because it is nearer home. Up and down our street Dr. Summerskill has been the topic of the week; we have read her speeches, been to hear her and discussed it all over teacups, telephones and front gates, and we find that "S.S." has written in her first, sentence the word that we are groping towards-‘dis-appointed." of us who live our We are not sure ’that it is Dr. Summerskill in whom we are disappointed, but rather in the occasion from which we had hoped so much. She has come and she has gone, and somehow contact has not been made, We are not convinced that she knows how we live, Ordinarily we do not mind this; politicians and celebrities come and go; sometimes they say sensible and stimulating things and sometimes not, but we are used to feeling as the private in the army feels, that our lives move behind a thick veil that visiting generals cannot or will not draw aside, But here was someone different; she clearly desired to understand our lives, to know why we have only two children and do mot stand for Pariiament. "We Have Been Negligent" How does one understand another country? Those of us who have been to England here recall that what we know of English life came not from visiting institutions and talking to their heads, interesting though this was; nor from week-end visits in which our entertainment was skilfully mapped out and the machinery of domestic management hidden from us by our hostess, but from the days we spent quietly living with a family whose members went about their daily business. And in our street we are now Saying that we have been negligent to Dr, Summerskill (and to other such visitors). She should have come to stay with us. Of course she would have had to sleep on the sofa, but she would never forget (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) at least one of the reasons why.we do not have more children. She would have had to follow us into kitchens and laundries to discuss the problems of civilisation, but we are used to holding these discussions there, and our kitchens and laundries are finé and important placesshe would have been interested in them. She could have talked to our friends and neighbours as they dropped in, and from our one little street she would have seen more clearly than from countless mewspaper statistics how ‘many men have gone to serve overséas. She could have: talked to the raw material of our education system as it played in its natural surroundings, and through it gained some knowledge of our schools, Later, when she travelled, she would visit Karitane hospitals and the Medical School, but first she would know the system in action by standing ‘silently and anonymously beside us as we took the baby on’a routine visit to the Plunket rooms, or called in a doctor fo a sick child. Our Gardens And Their Cost She would like our gardens, but if she stayed with us for a few days she would understand how much of our affections, our time, and’ our energies they absorb; and when she had made the 40minute trip to the city, she would realise that the determination of every New Zealand householder to provide himself

with a little private park has swelled our city almost to the ungainly proportions of London; and that because we are each surrounded by our own trees, flowers, and vegetables, we are far from shops and post offices, and we think twice about standing for the city council or anything else that will take us to town to frequent meetings. These are just a:‘few of the problems that such a visitor, by living among us for a few days, could come to understand not only with the mind but with the heart and body a little also; they are problems to which the answers are by no means simple or obvious, but they are as fundamental a part of the pattern of life as the facts that are gathered from officials or from the Year Book. We have thought of all this too late to be of any use to Dr, Summerskill, and. we can but farewell her in the hope that her intelligence, her sympathies, and her penetration are sufficient for her to build up a reasonable

picture of us from her bird’s eye view. But when the next distinguished woman comes, we will take our courage in our hands and offer for a few days the hospitality of our street: before the ’plane comes -to whisk her swiftly from one point of interest to another, she will have absorbed something of the worm’s point of view. And if she is a Member of Parliament, she may for this experience be less a politician and more truly a representative of the people.