ROUND ABOUT MADRID:
↑ THE CHINA MAIL, THURSDAY, JULY 22. 1954.
NINE MONTHS WINTER, THREE MONTHS HELL
I
By John Culmer
HAVE bought myself trunks,
ice-box AA un automatic refrigerator cool ed by a block of ice bought from the grocer round the
corner.
At £8 it's obviously
to
and
dogs. birdcag and welcomes your patronage,
no nonsenso about not prams, hurtling through the city there's in taxin to the railway stations being allowed
bring your or artling out in their own cars own food. for the
Brava, the Guadarrama Mountains north of Madrid, or the popular and ex- pensive north coast.
CVRED
THE weather provided Spaniards with a ready- Unlike the English, who plan made conversational safety- good investment. For three their holidays months in ad-
valve. Although they have one the vasice, pesetas (about 7d.)
poring JtN colairful, of the world's finest climates,
Trave maid boys a flat slal of ice too-good-to-tx-trim-
Ye Madrilenos discuss and comment folders through the long winter
nter on the weather with vehement each morning which not
evenings, Spanier. muke up extravagance. For them it la only lasts through the night their minds in a
hurry, Here
We always "How hot!" or "How but CoolB the excellant. вствих.
will have cold)" they frantle urgency bottled beer I keep on hand, departed with
But the people who will prob- the farm-fresh to the Pyrenees, Majorca, or une preserves
of Die kantry attractive resorta obly suffer must this summer butter and milk, and ensures lining the north east between are the American servicemen
French and their the
families who a supply of really cold water Corunna
mixed border.
moving into Madrid each week. and cracked ice for
drinks.
I'm also buying an tric fun-18. 10. 0. for
oscillating modej.
THERE'S
the
CLAY
$
WHAT
incl
are
Take Ben Lansing, trausterred ዘን but from Florida at less than a
has Spaniards month's notice.
eler
of
The Spatosh Government, the
Corps, and thaplomatic
wealthy Krup
Ben
I
an spent the summer on San fumished flat in the next block,
Sebastian, but most people must sweat it out in Madrid.
Tr
ways
of
and I see him most days in the dark, cool, curtain-shaded back parlour of El Parque, a modest cafe-bar within hailing distance of my own flat.
several hite benrable A Custlinsking
to rise really soyng that the year vonat. popular recipe is
metathes
carly, he aut of the house by 8 months hell Baker
am, and be back again and has bs 1 pm at the latest. You of such proverbs al', umore B
stay indoors until 7 p.m. at the a little exaggerated In Spuri sa it makes an abusifut Time, earliest, and are then ready to
of the evening. Spend the red probably explains which popularity
This your we've been inv Hey Madland the weather las been fraktslily
friendly, 13
<001 daytime Jat exzess pleasantly chally night
Stindling as the Paseo del Prado or shping a long, cool drink in
4 n-au cun
But withough the oven-hot ONE old Madisieman custom is
summe 15 several weeks sv due an undisguised blessing for foreigners facing their best suum- mer in Spain the advance gurd of the extinated 200,000 propie who leave Madrid euch July has already begun the annual
Ben pays £40 month rent iL wife and three children of kindergarten age He's a sergeant in the U.S. Ale Force and therefore, by British standards, get princely pay. Pu
he For a week lived in a down- town huel, where his wife and his kids a got what he called "dyzoniery," Dzi cxaggerated word for the "Madrid" Tummy" which lays most newcomers low for the belter part of three days.
a
■
most Americans here, 14ke to take your evening meal al
Ben doesn't speak Spanish, and 1 mm sitting beneath the neneia
kind of childish Trees in one of the many bread there's
about him which avenidas that radiate from the helplessness
ely.
Your maid inevitably curns sympathy. centre of the
ahir from your was
tu VATNO
recommend bugs each
takes back Spanish patent medicine which that, serves it, and the disbes and plates. From re-adjusts upset stomacha in trek to the sen or the mountaiES.
Tarray koskwalter brings matter of hours, but I doubt if Every day you are bag family wine, coffre, and whatever else 1' be much help in getting the
He Lansing family acclimatised. parties, had hidden by sultenses, you may care
to drink.
By Appoir tenent Wine Merchants
to The Lou
King George VI
Dry Amontillado
Light Dry Sherry
Sherry
SANDEMAN
Sole Agents:-DODWELL & CO., LTD.
SOUTH
KONG & KOWLOON
heat that IT's not only the
worries them--already, when the summer hasn't even begun, It's the food, and
The water, and the shopping, the unusual hours people keep, and the noise and the olive oil.
The food is naturally different from what an Englishuman or an American
used to. But taking it all round it costs no does in England, more than it and there's 011 abundance of
GILES AMONG THE GUARDS
According to a War Office spokesman "some confusion among the troops has now been cleared up."
This refers to the order given to sentries of the Royal Horse Guards
and wearing bowler hats
carrying men """Troopers will salute ALL umbrellas," said the order.
Unfortunately A lot of cads who wear bowler hats, although
AN
they
дте
day walk-
altered 10: men with
So to
not actually junior Guards officers, spent the ing up and down Whitehall gelling saintes on the cheap. put a slop to these pirates the order has now been
their 1150
discretion "Trooper will
when saluting bowler bats and umbrellas."
Heigh hol
ARCTIC
OWN
DREAM
CALLS TO THE
T
✪ work in the land
where day is hard
is
to tell from night. where the often so hard you walk on it, and the land so soft you sink in it, you have to be an optimist.
But to live your life there and to nurture the pre- carious breath of civilisation there, you have to
be 1111 incurable optimist.
Take the tiny hamlet where a river empties the dark waters of Dismal Lake into the Arctic Sen, for instance. It has a trading post, a detachment of "the Mounted," two churches, a post office, and a govern- ment radio station.
find it mine."
marked "Copper-
fruit al ridiculously low prices. On the maps, you will The
direct from The water, piped the mountains, is celebrated in Spain for its crystal clarity and tonic purity, but it's "different." It's apt to upset a newcomer.
Yet no one mines copper
The shopping can be fun. Like there. the "extraordinary" hours, you Just have to get used to it. The problem, but with noise is a practice you learn to shut it out automatically.
★☆
Every year
By Les Armour
DUKE
ferta of Western elvilisation: flour. butter. tea. Jam and, sometimes, flowered "Mother Hubbard dresses and zippered from tho "ashion park as centres" of the south.
The Duke of Edinburgh will fly in August across Canada's vast northland, stopping at the fabulous Yellowknife gold mines, the bustling uranium plant at Port Radium, and, finally, at Cop- Ing post they can buy the tools permine, a lonely outpost on the pictures, and words, is the story of that tiny community -the nucleus of a great drea and a crossroad of civilisation.
Arctic Sea.
on
Through the continuous winter nighi, Mounties keep watch
frontier
like Canada's northern
posts,
this Coppermine.
Que
st
when the Even the olive oil, used every-
the which lures a steady stream This summer, it will get into where in Spain In the prepara-glaciers erupt
dash- determined men to the Duke-Britain's solid of there are tion cooking and serving of Arctic,
handsome Duke of food, is something to be faced. chunks of copper in the ice. Canada's barren frontiers. ing. After my first week here I was Somewhere nearby, there is Like most of Canada's wild Edinburgh. convinced that even the wine a rich vein of metal. But dreams, it will one day come tasted of ou.
So 1 nte all my meals in the cost of getting it out true.
its price to they cook would raise everything in butter. It was something like the price of much more expensive than any~ | gold. where else and not much more satisfactory. Now everything 1 Cat cooked in oll
a restaurant
where
In Canada, the Duke is the symbol of "the get-up The dream calls for roads, and-at-it" spirit which has
and canals,
mighty en- brought countless dreams to gineering projects. It calls reality. "Coppermine" for all resources of modern I'd say it is just a dream. Yet it is man.
tiny But maybe it's just that I've got a Canadian dream, &
part of the greater dream
had neither taste nor
used to it.
STILL
odour,
The name
The Duke-by his own re- the rich quest will fly across Goldfields of Yellowknife, into And it called for a Duke. top secret Port Radlum (once
TWENTY-TWO
SHORT OF A
TWENTY-TWO
London. decibels
DECIBELS
EAR
SORE
By ROY RICHARDSON
Here
in
More Important, at the trad- and the motorboots which, to- gether with the government's schemes for preserving and ex- Lending the native animal supplies, have nearly brought to an end centuries of fear and the threat of famine.
called Eldorado), where Can- nda's biggest supply of uranium is mined and
and. processed,
At
the
they Coppermine, too,
government's health the through
meet Services and,
Anally, to the Arctic sea itself churches its educational system. and Coppermine,
He will get a close-up picture of one of the world's tost frontiers--and the northland will be bathed in a glore of publicity. Out (+f that may come a new world understand- ing of the
the treasures north and, because of 1, more men fired with the spirit of odventure and a few men with the necessary capital may be impelled to give It a second look.
C
are
But the govemment is cau- tious and the while man's world ja never thrust upon them Laws explained and the Eskimo obeyed them without question, because they can see that their lives and Hivelihood depend them, They welcome education.
upon
But education, unlike tinned poses problems. The
That, at any rate, Is what the Mounties and the traders Eskimo is still a nomad. To and trappera
move Coppermine survive, he must are hoping
stantly.
of
But they will have more than a foretaste of riches to show the Duke.
Coppermine is not only potentially rich, it is a crossroad of civilisations,
For Coppermine stands as an exhibit in human relations-the
con-
Some of the children can bo reached, for brief periods at For settlements. least, in the tho others, mobile schools will be the ultimate answer.
Yet,
to
granting a solution the technical problems, educa- place where another man's age- flon must still face the problem old dreams, the dream of men created by the clash of civilisa- with different WoyB of life ons. living happily side by side, may
Eako education, ple Cian- come true.
*dian Government stands scan- vinced, Emust produce men and A women capable of joining the
་་
It remains to be shen Whether or ot the two dreams will clash
Eskimo world with the white in's world without sing the Eskimo fidelity.
180 4t, the plan, his Sten The sloping tundra albig_tie súćcesäflik. {Most) Eskimos/now Coronation Gulf and the celloes are skilled mechanics, capable of the Arctic are part of the of handling all the modern traditional hunting grounds of equipment which can bo¬of ser- the Fakimp. They are the haunt Vice to him, An increasing Bum» on the uscious while fox. And ber car read and write of
and surrounding waters is the grapple with the problems of an seat which providpat everything atomlogo. tromboots to breaknast,
Around the setleniert we 250 of Canada's '5,000 Exitimos many more pass by the trading post each yeng
At Coppermi's trading they sell the alt of th fox- useless animal to hem
off their
Fewup to now, have shown any desire, to throw traditional way of life.
The second dream, then, is w of the way to comingstike, remains to be seen whether the two dreams vill
not
The helicopter men, then, have history at least on their side. And the sound-meter.
The no-helicopter faction, on The noise, they argue, The same goes for jet air-
their distinctly useful purpose. more than cancels out any craft which enn send the the other hand, are serving and me the tin ce clash. British helicop benefits there might be in sound-meter needles soar For the storm they have raised
from the threshold of pain stands the much- disputed
ter.
taxis.
And now comes the hover-
plane noise as much as possible.
At 120 decibels (sound having helicopter buses and ing to ten decibels beyond has forced the pace in the the point where it starts laboratory battle to cut hover- measures) the human ear starts to ache. Standing Nonsense, say the holi- hurting. next to a revving helicopter copter men. And they point
TOP OF BUILDINGS you may not be able to out that the citizens of plone champions' trump card. to The noise near # helicopter hear yourself speak, but you Britain, have learned
The Ministry of Supply is are still twenty-two de- live with much worse noises revving-up on the ground is not
one whit of a decibel worav, forging ahead with the develop- and to prove their point than what can be heard at any ment of hollcopter silencers cibels short of Д sore
they have records kept by traffic-heavy street Junction. And there is a move to have ear.
And that's more than can sound engineers. be said in respect of tubo
trains, Jet, aircraft or pneu- matic drills.
--
THEY MAY WINCE
What is happening to the
the same growing pains
that beset in their time the rallway
helicopter is that it is suffering building's deed Bound deflectors.
the
aro
and
helldromes on top of hith 'with special
Likely London altes This la going to be the No one, they say, writes locomotive, the horseless carr Waterloo, Charing Cross
heavier-than-air Victoris stations. helicopter an Indignant letter to The machine
A .point
The mainstay of .
and even the humble
to note: helicopter is ill an unecono- champions in the storm Times when a tube train bleycle. over the future of Britain's clocks up more than a hun the last century an enterprising 1059 before the only
When in the early years of inical proposition. It will be twin- hoverplanes.
dred decibels as it roars Scotsman. called Kilpatrick engine British helicopter so far, Ever since the idea was through 'an Underground Maerstilan built the first the Bristol 173, can be flown mooted of helldromes In station. They may wince practical bicycle, there were economically as......a" passenger Britain's principal titles at the 100 plus decibels worthy cillzone who shook their carrier. there have been complaints from a pneumatic drill, head and said the country hat Nevertheless, Britain is press-
one to the dogs. Today, the ing ahead and the hellcopter from one section of the but that's as far as it bike is af much spart of here to stá public.
[11. groes.
Britian Lite as the fraather.
decibels and