First Catch Your Hare

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 288, 29 December 1944, Page 6

First Catch Your Hare

HEN I dined once with a couple who, being childless, were affluent, we had black-currant tart; on another occasion a friend returned from Christchurch with a pot of the jam and gave a lunch party in its honour. So I was as well equipped as the average Aucklander to listen to an A.C.E, talk from 1YA on How to Preserve Black-currants, Up here we find it best not to let our thoughts dwell upon this quintessence of vitamin C, for if we plant black-currants they exhibit

stubborn and leafy sterility, and the tiny quantity that comes into our shops is not likely, I find on inquiry, to sell at less than 3/- ‘per lb. this year. We grow some strange local fruits of our own, and during certain seasons the balance of good things is decidedly in our favour. But at this time of year, if we are not reduced to crawling about nibbling grass like Captain Cook’s men, we are at least warding off scurvy by measures that range from the dull to the quite distasteful. It is when an occasional one of these excellent Dunedin-born A.C.E. talks disagrees with us that we are reminded sharply how untidily this little countty straggles down across the lines of latitude, for what is sound advice to two-thirds of its population can make the rest of us feel rather like those breadless citizens of Paris whose queen recommended them, to eat cake,