Minor Miseries

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 785, 6 August 1954, Page 15

Minor Miseries

HAT are the things that take the edge off your enjoyment of life? That’s a question all of us could answer at some length if given half a chance, and there was no lack of willing masochists when the NZBS decided not long ago to get half a dozen people to re-live their everyday sufferings over the air. Of course, it was an understood thing that the speakers musn’t take themselves too seriously, and listeners, will find they are amused rather than made miserable when Here’s My Discomfort is broadcast in the 2.0 p.m. Mainly for Women session from 3YA during the next few weeks-the first broadcast on August 11. Besides, there will be the pleasure of discovering that someone else shares that suffering you thought you had all to yourself. The minor irritations of life can be either physical or mental, as Joan Stevens, Lecturer in English at Victoria University College, points out in the talk which opens the series, and first on her list of bodily discomforts is a rubberised raincoat on a sunny day. Second only to that are the theatre pests, and by the time Miss Stevens has finished telling us the many

ways in which they can be annoying she’s really in full cry. Owen Jensen, musician and _ critic, follows Miss Stevens, and says a good deal about musical discomfort. Among the pet aversions discussed in other talks are cats (Judith Terry), and dogs-or at least the "principle" of dogs (R. A. Copland); and J. D. McDonald and Fred Jones, each with a title to defend, argue their claims to be, respectively, "the most discomforted person" and "the most irritable man" in the world.