IT WAS NO HOLIDAY FOR MOTHER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 455, 12 March 1948, Page 6

IT WAS NO HOLIDAY FOR MOTHER

LEW New Zealand mothers are likely to forget the summer of 1947-48, with first the entertainment and latterly the instruction of house-bound children.

Here is the story, told

by

BEATRICE

ASHTON

of

one Wellington woman whose recollections of the Long Vacation are more turbulent than most.

' ZEALAND housewives bear their burdens with distinct good humour, elastic endurance, and inexhaustible second wind. How else could they have survived this summer? The small fruit ripened and rotted in Christmas week; three times within a month the meat supply hung precariously, without refrigeration, for four days. And instead of long Jazy days at the beach where the ardent standards of suburban housekeeping succumb to the encroaching sea and sand and sun, there were the children, home from school three weeks early. What was worse, they were to stay there for as long as the authorities should choose. No one questioned the necessity, but many women felt ill-used. Here, the National Film Unit decided, was material for a film. It was produced by Margaret Thomson, a New Zealander who has come to the staff at Miramar after twel¥é years in England. In a short burlesque sequence the film foretold the worst that could happen. Young hooligans leapt from roof-tops with Mother’s best umbrella clutched para-chute-wise and eagerly set Dad’s best socks to boil on wash-day. But the film was called Keeping the Peace and it was full of admirable suggestions for Mrs. New Zealand and her bored brood. How did you react to that happy homily om holiday hobbies for housebound children? Did you toy with the idea "of turning the crisis into those creative channels and then = shrink appalled at the thought of flour-paste ingrained deep in your living-room carpet, pitched battles on the front lawn, and a bucket brigade in the backyard? x % * OWEVER you felt, you had nothing on Mrs. B. R. Findlay, of Totara Road, Miramar. That film was made in

her house, in her yard. Wondering idly what it feels like to be on location with the Film Unit and what it takes to attract their attention, I went ‘to find out. It was a wet unpleasant day when I inquired my way up Totara Road. Through the window of the house I saw a ‘bed littered with some of the props. On such a day any woman whose children could perform such miracles of indoor occupation would be bound to be in! She was; and upholstering the kitchen chairs.

Doubtless to remove the suggestion that she was an ideal mother with ideal children she remarked at once that she was the last person in the world to amuse youngsters and that hers had but two ideas in wet weather-cricket in the hall and football in the hall. Somewhere between her modesty and the smooth face of the film there was an atmosphere of freedom, an enterprising flair of originality, and a definite: sense of direction. Take a roomy house in a large wilderness of a garden, set down there a man whose profession is teaching, whose wife accepts mess and confusion as the natural result of having three lusty youngsters and you have a perfect location for such a film. Even Mrs, Findlay thought so when she opened the door to the producer at ten o’clock in the morning, in the first week of the holidays. Nothing had seemed particularly remarkable about the children’s play until that moment.

But the trolley track racing down the slope by the vegetable garden looked to her like a: photogenic find. ("Not educational enough!" said the Producer.) Perhaps the fort, burrowed tunnel-like along the boundary fence! ("Too shady," said the Producer.) What about the concrete at the back door where the children had splashed every summer away since before they reached the stage where suburbia demands that their nakedness be clothed. (‘"Possibly," said the Producer.) Or a Tarzan shot where they swing down perilously from a pine tree, across a breath-taking cliff-face and up again into the safety of a macrocarpa! ("Too dangerous," said the Producer.) * * * {Tt is the kind of garden that absorbs the children of the whole street and Mrs. Findlay called in one of her neighbours for more suggestions, Gradually

the thing took shape. The producer began to devise shots in the sunlight and out of the wet-weather experiences of those mothers, out of the outdoor fun of very ordinary children a rough sort of plan was made. However other New Zealand children were filling in their time the rest of that week, Totara Road had hold of an adventure. The news spread along the back fences, round the gangs and down the street. For three frantic days the whole neighbourhood trekkea through that house, while the producer selected and directed and the camera wound ceaselessly. Somewhere in this indescribuble confusion Mrs, Findlay made beds, cooked meals, played hostess and policewoman. . To build the fort in the sunlight the children hacked and scythed a clearing, (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) piled apple boxes. extravagantly, camouflaged them with the grass and went to war. Four or five boys were to "hold the fort and as many to attack it. The camera moved in and the battle raged. Suddenly a youngster arrived brandishing a five-foot crayfish spear and an uninvited guest produced a tomahawk. "Cut!" called the Producer before such lethal devices over-emphasised the realism. A dozen disappointed heroes watched those borrowed apple boxes being returned to the toralegrpcer. Resting uneasily the next morning Mrs. Findlay woke at 5.30 to find half the cast puddling round with shovels of clay and buckets of water getting ready for the model village. As is usual with children who sense that something is expected of them, they laid it out with symmetrical hills and a conspicuous absence of originality. The cameraman and the bystanders thought it a waste of film, but patched up with match-box houses and debris the village provided an extraordinarily good sequence. * ie %

S° it was all the way through. Whatever was intended to be a sensation failed sadly. The unrehearsed filled the reels. Dressing-up and make-believe belong particularly to children, to their own imaginings. Those whose mothers sent them along with a Sunday-school freshness and fancy-dress finery found themselves ignored. Under the eye of the camera surrounded by maternal pride these children were torn also between their natural dramatic sense and the persuasions of the producer. But they performed better than their mothers, whose laughter and applause dried up whenever the camera moved in their direction. The outdoor shots were completed. They played shops, modelled in clay from the garden bank. Then in the middle of a hot afternoon the stars moved indoors under the concentrated gaze of a dozen children who flattened their noses against the bay windows. There in the heat of the floodlights and spots, with the camera turned on them as relentlessly as the producer urged their attention to the funny man over in the corner, those remarkable children made Christmas cards, did their paste graining; made their masks and clowned in them. Starring roles are hard work. Housing 17 or 18 children, six or seven adults, the paraphernalia and personnel of the Film Unit, was hard work too. Mrs. Findlay had thoroughly enjoyed the experience, but once was enough for her lifetime. "And the children," I said, "did they enjoy it?" "They énjoyed seeing themselves later," she told me. "They all went down, scrubbed and beribboned, to a preview at the Studio. It was hard to recognise them as the same little hooligans on the screen. All the way home they talked it over, and criticised each other’s performance, very seriously. We’ll see what Robin has to say about it." In he came, followed by the discreet whispers of the others. "Me too? Me too?"

"Did you have fun?" I asked him. He | hesitated and offered me a paper loily. "Did you enjoy it, Robin?" asked his mother. Most seriously, his eyes full of the’ apple boxes that had to be returned, the crayfish spear that was too dangerous, with the memory of the enthusiastic adult intrusion into their very private world, he said i wasn’t much FUN, but we enjoyed | it Bs cea : |