Get a Haircut

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 354, 5 April 1946, Page 11

Get a Haircut

S I sat alone in the privacy of my home the other evening, a Voice speaking on behalf of the Electricity Controller interrupted the musical programme to which I was listening, and told me that my electric clock was ten minutes slow. A quick check with the old seven-and-sixpenny alarm showed that the Voice was right. Something at Arapuni, or wherever these things begin, had struck at its life centres, and for the first time in years its heart had failed to beat its 60 to the minute. This was my first shock-the clock that had been infallible for years was no longer so. But somehow that was not the worst of it. A disembodied Voice had floated into my home and told me something I myself did not know about its inner workings. I thought of Robinson Crusoe startled out of his long solitude by the voice calling, "Poor Robinson Crusoe"; I thought of other people who have sat alone and had strange, significant things said to them by voices in the air. It is profoundly disturbing at first, but no doubt one becomes quite used to it. And now I look forward to the time when there will be more of these useful hints — when I may leave it to the omniscience of various Controllers to watch over me in my solitude, to teil me that I have left the iron switched on, that I need a haircut, or that a mosquito is about to settle on my left ear.