THE POTATO AND THE DAFFODIL

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 495, 17 December 1948, Page 20

THE POTATO AND THE DAFFODIL

. They flash upon that inward eye is the bliss of solitude; And ‘then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils. RONWEN, Pam, Arthur and Graham are not average New Zealand boys and girls. They are all’ in the; Sixth Forms of Christchurch High Schools, which means that their parents have sufficient income to keep them at school longer than the average child. Because they are bright and have a background of ‘security, they talked ventertainingly at a 3YA Discussion on "school holidays. Graham thought the first term was too broken up. It took a while to get started in a new form, and ‘then there was Easter and Anzac Day, afd before you hed really settled down to work the term had ended. There were about eight odd day holidays through the year. Why not lump them together and»take them’ in the middle_of the dreary winter term when you really needed » the break? There was some dissension over this. Apart from the Education Act, which, the. Chairman pointed éut, expressly forbade such a thing, it, would ‘be the ruin’ of football and hockey’ competitions, the working members of the family were not likely to have a

ae Vas aa then (and it was | a good thing for the family to have a_holiday together), the teachers liked the . odd long week-end, and it was better for younger children, and their parents, to ‘have more frequent, short holidays than a long stretch in which they didn’t really know what to do with themselves. Graham retired, admitting he was probably wrong. It was very amiable and unparliamentary. "Now," said the Chairman, "we come to an important problem. How to/use holidays." . That was an easy, one. Work, "Get out," said Arthur.. "Get into a

job and see how the other fellow lives. Agriculturally speaking, holidays evidently come at the right times. There was the potato harvest in May, someone explained, and wheat in January, and in Septem‘ber you could go, into a brickworks, er a factory or something. The others didn’t swallow this whole. The girls thought perhaps not the brickworks, and Graham wanted to relax_a bit in

the short holidays, but they all wanted: to work in the long summer vacation. "It’s seven weeks," Pam said. "If you don’t work you get tired." HERE was talk of arranging holidays to suit the potato harvest, if in some districts holidays didn’t suit it already. The Chairman thought this vey interesting and important, So did I. rt. "4 If you don’t work = get tired. 7? Here were four bright New Zadtenl children drawing their inspiration and philosophy of life from the potato, No laughing and dancing with the daffodils for them. "Of no," they said; calm; confident and materialist. "The daffodil is a flashy spring flower, blooming to-day, in the florist’s to-morrow, ‘and on the third day in the dust bin. Poetry is all very well, and we would be ‘the (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) first to say that English poetry is a valued part of our heritage, but you must keep a sense of proportion about these things. You must keep poetry in its place, which is as a part of our heritag?, a part of the past, not uncomfortably mixed up with the present. You mustn’t let it interfere with life... Now take the potato, Think of the acreage planied each year, think of the yield in tons per acre, think of its keeping qualities, think of it on the table all the year round, think of its vitamin content, its starch percentage, the capacity it has to satisfy, the solid return it gives the conscientious grdwer. . ." "THE voices went on, some in the radig, and some in my head. What nice children they were; adaptable, kindly, dependable, serene, only an cccasional qualm of guilt if they caught themselves at pleasure. They had a mild sense of humour, which is comfortable, but no wit, which often isn’t. They could fit a gate, or replace a fuse wire, or knock together a dog kennel, or cook a fair meal on a camp stove, they could set out to hitch-hike 200 miles and never think it a chancy business, they could make. a _ better job» than «their parents of filling in an income tax form; the earth waS "theirs, and the potatoes. in it. ' This, I thought, going off at a tangent, is admirable. Here is a radio Discussion touching a tender spot and making at least one listener think. And it is a tender spot. Who am I to condescend to these earnest young potato diggers? I'm involved too. I’m one of them. We've dug a pit to store our potatoes, and fallen in with them. Up above, in the sunshine, the brightly burning madmen sing capering, improvident songs: When daffodils begin to peer, With heigh! thé doxy, over the dale, Why, then comes in the sweet o’ the year; For the red blood reigns in the winter’s pale.

But we have our noses in the potatoes. No summer songs for us and our aunts, or any tumbling in the hay either. We're too shrewd for that immortal nonsense. We've been educated under a free, compulsory and secular system which keeps the daffodil in its place. . . "[,DUCATION is supposed to fit you to live with other people," said ofe of the confident young radio voices. Of course it is, and when the other million and three-quarter people are also interested in potatoes we find we fit in very comfortably; so comfortably we don’t even know that what we're missing is

life.

G. leF. Y.