Songs of Safety

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 388, 29 November 1946, Page 11

Songs of Safety

al NS rn ae HE ZB breakfast session provides more of a service to listeners than the YA. Not only is the time given at more frequent intervals (in the ‘firm cheerful tones of one who has been up since before 6.0 am.), but the programme arrangers have even perfected a special technique for getting the children off to school. A week or so ago it was Roger. Roger was the studio horse, who just before 8.10 would come thundering into the studio, take the bell rope between his teeth and ring the bell. This was a very effective procedure. ‘There was a sense of indescribable urgency about Roger's thuridering and whinnying that sent mothers scurrying after schoolbags as if they too had to get to the dynamited bridge before the coach with the heroine did. But now the mettlesome Roger has presumably been’ put out to grass and his place as a getteroffer of schoolchildren has been usurped by Songs of Safety. These are rather banal little ballads on stich topics as Leaning Out of Windows, Kindness to Animals, the Striking of Matches, Since they pack no punch either verbally or melodically ("When leaning out of windows, Be careful how you do it, Find something firm to cling to, And keep on clinging to it’) there is no danger that the children will halt, spellbound, in their tracks, and thus make themselves late for school.