COMING ROUND THE BEND

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 735, 14 August 1953, Page 14

COMING ROUND THE BEND,

with

Denis

Glover

MANIFESTO Gone round the Bend + Has made me one friend, And lost several more Who think I’m a bore. Of course, I’m not capable of infecting The body politic with any ideas Worth accepting or rejecting: I have no wish to bash ears Or move anyone to tears, But I still think 1 ought, No matter who demurs, To put down the agreeable thought As it occurs. Who wants to parade his bunions As cut and dried opinions? But some people fail to note That it’s them I often quote. Congreve said, ‘‘Leave wisdom to fools, They have need of it." Various schools of thought Ought to take heed of it. Me? Even if the world were ending, I'd still like to be caught Bending. OW mercilessly mothers of no particular manners insist on their children saying "Thank you." [7 takes all sorts to spoil a world. RE you, too, always unjustly accused of something you've really done? T may be true that we can entertain no concept without words. Certainiy many people, and most women, show a tendency to think with their tongues. EOPLE who smoke pipes’ are either : colossally self-satisfied, or wretch- | edly unsure of themselves, or perhaps

lucky enough to have found a good tobacco. ‘ AM sorry for the Dutch woman who hadn’t plumbed that good New Zealand idiom, "Gents 2/6, Ladies a Plate." In some mystification she took along a plate. It was, she told me, one of her best plates, "IVE a woman a flat surface and she wants to put a bowl of flowers on it. Men are perhaps schooled to expect this, and even to like it; but secretiy they know that a flat surface is the ideal repository for collar-studs, boxes of matches, loose change, laundry tickets and all the other minutiae of a busy life and over-crowded pockets. HAVE spent many years listening to the musical ping of the cash register, yet it remains an instrument I have never had the pleasure of playing for myself. T is usually people with dreadful voices who have the most to say. HAVE at last succeeded in striking my own medal. It bears on the obverse a poor effigy of myself, and on the back the simple inscription, "Not for Golf.’"