Under or Over?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 320, 10 August 1945, Page 13

Under or Over?

HE Head Office of the National Broadcasting Service in Wellington is approached, for those coming along Lambton Quay, by an ‘alley-way and a flight of concrete steps You go up the alley-way and then turn sharp right up the steps to the Terrace above. I went up the alley-way. When I got near the steps (but still had my view of them blocked by the building on the corner) a man stopped me. He Said: "Are you superstitious?" I asked him to repeat his question. He did. Of course I wondered what he was getting at, but I told him I wasn’t, and went on my way. The explanation awaited my eyes round the corner. Two men were mend: ing a window high above the steps. A

tall ladder stretched from the extreme left, with its foot against the wall, to the window on the right. There was practically no alternative. To negotiate according to the rules of superstition would involve a considerable loss of poise, and also an altercation with the young man holding the ladder steady, who filled the space on the left, and who snarled, when I appeared to veer towards him, "Nah, go on." Chipped putty in your hat was probably the worst that might follow if you took the risk. So I took it. But at the top, I wondered about The Man in the Street. What does he do? I lounged there in the sun. The young man climbed the ladder and went to assist in putting the new glass in. An airman went down, as an elderly woman came up. The airman clambered round the end. The woman came under. She saw me smiling. She said: "That was funny. wasn’t it?" Then four or five people came at intervals. They all went under without apparent hesitation. Another watcher joined me. "How many go round, that’s what I want to know," I said. An old man staggered up from below. "Old Jock, he’ll go under," said the man beside me. "He doesn’t give a damn. He’s the caretaker over in, our building." Then I was alone again. I called out to the man at the top of the ladder: "How many go round?" "Not too b- many," he said. "Because I won't let ’em." More people came by. A soldier from a visiting ship with two bottles of beer paused. But he took the risk. A woman with two children didn’t even seem ‘to notice anything. One or two looked the ladder up and down, and smiled a little to themselves. But the airman was still the only one who had bothered to go ‘round, out of I suppose 15 or 20 people. It is disappointing to have to report that no well-known broadcasting personalities happened to pass by at that time.

Old

Moore.