Local Elections End Where?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 913, 8 February 1957, Page 15

Local Elections End Where?

Los ANGELENES have no doubts how far their city extends: north as far as San Francisco, south to San Diego, east, well Palm Springs anyways, maybe as far as Las Vegas. Drive around stranger, you'll find it a right smart piece of real estate. Back in Auckland, also a rapidly developing plot, the chronicler stili senses doubts about the extent of the North Shore. It does not, except in the minds of land agents who have missed their morning dose of tranquillising drug, extend north to Wha-ngarei-not yet. Seriously though (and how serious it may be for candidates at local elections!) wouldn’t it be a wise move to have something official on paper by the time the Bridge opens? Anything later than that would be too late. I’ve seen what happened in a similar situation in Vancouver, B.C., where the whole North Shore caught alight with violent enthusiasm and went rocketing off up into the mountains and along the steep rocky coast. Civilisation suddenly alighted in places not quite ready for it. Some of the new residents of the higher heights who left out a saucer of milk for stray cats found they were nourishing cougars. Driving quietly round Auckland’s far departing point, all the gracefully indented miles of coast from Takapuna to Long Bay, I had a few small nightmares, although not about large cats. I had a little dream by a land agent’s hoarding (big as the side of a house), calmly advertising panoramic and gulf views, and I saw the hurricane of business screaming off the newly opened Bridge and carrying off this hoarding like a too optimistically set

spinnaker. I saw coveys of caravans, struggling like oxen in the mangroves, because that was all that was left for the small buyer. I got so steamed up that I buttonholed a Long Bay man and said I was going to write about the future of his district. "Future?" he screeched. "Isn’t the present tough enough for you? Sewage is a scandal! If I was mayor..." And away he went. See what I mean about serious for local election candidates! Last Note (CHRISTCHURCH is an orderly town in almost every way. Climatically you can bet that a cold easterly will blow twenty days out of thirty, a cold sou’wester will bring cold rain nine days in thirty, and on the thirtieth day a mild nor’wester will prevail. In summer, on this day, the thermometer goes screaming up into the mid-seventies, children are allowed to take off their second sweater, shop assistants faint in the arms of the handsome floor walker, in the club dining rooms gilt mirrors reflect the empurpled faces of those descended from the pioneers as they give their blood pressure fits with a luncheon of roast mutton followed by steamed suet dumpling with jam, and the early editions of the evening paper run a heat wave story. Only on this’ one day in thirty can Christchurch women change their tweeds and Antarctic underwear for summer frocks. In tweeds the girls bloom like gorse hedges, but

they seem to find it hard to overcome technical problems of fit and design set by the unfamiliar, un-gorse like fabrics from which summer frocks are made. The returning native, wandering down the street on such a day,. wili know for sure he’s in Christchurch. Auckland could not provide such spectacles. Here, for example, is a lady who has a creation rather large for her. She has starched it so that it has a shape of its own. There seems to be a foot of empty space between herself and the front of the frock. Perhaps another member of her family was also sheltering in there, but has now left to buy a frock of her own. The returning native is grateful for such diversions, and equally grateful for this day of warmth and dry air. Will the City Council please arrange cafe tables on the sidewalk? The returning native wishes to sit and contemplate in

comfort while he may.

G. leF.

Y.

THE END