Auckland Notes

Radio Record, Volume VI, Issue 42, 28 April 1933, Page 20

Auckland Notes

By

Neutron

N Saturday "Old Wire Whiskers" commenced a new series of talks that deal with the well-known "Marie Celeste" mystery. I wish he hadn't. Not that his first instalment was un-interesting-this speaker eouldn’t make "the strangest tale in the annals of seafaring" uninteresting, try he ever so hard-but I Jike him best when he tells of ocean racing through the storms of the "Roaring Yorties," pearls, strange sea monsters and the wonders of the great waters he has seen and describes so well. However, many listeners will be curious to learn if "Old Wire Whiskers" subscribes to the generally accepted solution of this sea mystery. eh G & "THE Laws of Alfred," as interpreted from 1YA by Mr, Julius Hogben, were as entertaining as they were instructive. Alfred, said the speaker, founded the Navy, introduced education, and expressed a dying wish to be remembered by some of his good works. Actually, "the only thing you remember about him is a story I do not propose to tell." Alfred enacted that the Ten Commandments should be part of the laws of England. People then had to "honour thy father and thy mother." Obviously the Ten Command- ments had never been part of New Zealand law. The Right of Sanctuary, as explained by Mr. Hogben, took curious form. If a man were attacked by his enemies he could shelter in a church and could not be dragged out for seven days. In the interim, however, D0 one must feed him, so that he had two chances, one of starvation and another of being killed by those outside. In Alfred’s time a dog that bit eost its owner 6/- for the first offence and, if he continued to feed it, each subsequent bite was on a rising scale. To-day English law gave a dog the first bite for. nothing. Public -slander meant the excision of the offending tongue. A freeman of Alfred’s day had to observe a number of legal holidays, including twelve days at Christmas, three days before and seven after aster, besides a fortnight in the autumn and plenty of saints’ days. The Saxon freeman was thus almost better off than his modern counterpart, the bank manager, "who is about the only free man to-day." Alfred introduced education, so the price of brains went up: it cost 30/- to crack a skull in his time, as against 10/- of the previous lawgiver, Despite the depression it was apparent that not many of us would exchange present troubles for the potentialities of Alfred’s times and laws, * % * "RESERVED" on the programme is not always a guarantee of something good, but it was last Wednesday, when 1YA presented Mr. George Gordon, a tenor from Hikurangi, whose full voice and effortless singing was a real treat. This item was "one out of the box." * * Me. S. J. GUDSELL’S talk from 1YA of New Zealand athletic champions would. bring back memories to many. Juekie McLaughlin, finest all-rounder in the world, champion from 75 yards

to a mile, whose times under the conditions still stand; Randolph Rose, the long-legged Masterton farmer; and a host of other great ones of the track ran again for those who had seen them in their prime. Doubtless, too, these talks will be an incentive for the young ones, spurring them on to something worthy of New Zealand’s great atbletes of the past. * bd & ai R. PERCY HAMBLIN’S Automobile Odyssey, as told from 1YA, took him this week only from San Diego to Los Angeles, the cheapest place inthe United States to live in, but then t was a lot to see and hear about. iPast pretty towns on a wide ocean-side highway and then by towns once pretty, but ruined, artistically, by the finding of "the greasy gold of the earth-oil," where crowding derricks and corrugated shanties replaced trim gardens and semi-Spanish bungalows, they came at last to the City of the Angels with its tremendous human traffic, vehicular and pedestrian, alike controlled by automatic signals. Then there was the Olympic Stadium, which made Rome’s Coliseum seem tiny, and the Museum, with its reconstruction of all the prehistoric animals that once roam- ed California from skeletons found in an ancient lake of tar. yr