Seven Minutes to Eight

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 324, 7 September 1945, Page 9

Seven Minutes to Eight

HERE should be a special medal struck for those who arrange breakfast programmes. The hour between seven and eight in the morning is the time when the domestic regime teeters most perilously on the edge of revolution, anarchy, or mere bad temper. It only wants a blue note from Bing for one, or a too aggressive fugue for another, to provoke an "incident." The early morning programme organiser and the announcer, too, may hold in their hands the key to domestic harmony or disharmony. The same music may produce a quite diffarent reaction according to the weather, the conflict between

alarm clock time and radio time (or no radio time at all) or the effects of the night before. When, for instance, I felt all the better one morning recently for a spirited performance of "Give a Little Whistle," I am inclined to put it down to the spring sunshine, for normally such blatant cheerfulness would make me just the reverse of cheerful. And when, moreover, I became positively benign at the usually revolting sound of a Wurlitzer organ, I can only conclude that conditions were in every way abnormal. Certainly the courtesy and efficiency of the announcer who unobtrusively faded out "Rhapsody in Blue" for a few moments to announce in a quiet voice: "1YA: the time is seven minutes to eight" when in fact I had thought it at least five past the hour, did much to engender equability of spirit and when "How About a Cheer for the Navy" was followed omnisciently by the news "The British East Indies Fleet is on its way to Singapore" I came all over aglow.