Pagë
THE NIGHTMARE
NOISE
NO ONE CAN DUCK
THE CHINA MAIL, THURSDAY, JUNE 2, 1960.
NOW the jet age is facing one of the major problems of its career-NOISE.. the eerie, piercing noise of the great gas- turbine engines which power, the new giant airliners. Progress on Britain's coming Transatlantic challenger, the Vickers Super VC-10, has been halted by the difficulty of muting its engines. The people on the conscience of the men of the drawing boards are those who live near the world's major airports. Here is a personal report that puts you in the "hot seat"-beyond the runway of a jet-age airport, a counter- part of many the world over.
by
DONALD GOMERY
T 1.15 in the morning a monster takes hold of my pyjama
AT
So, day after day and night
after night, the complaints go on, At present only Comet 4Bs are allowed to take off between 11
m, and 7 a.m
on scheduled
PERHAPS THE MOST IMPORTANT WOMAN
IN THE FAR EAST...
HE was gaily chattering about trivialities. The weather, the pressure cooker climate of Singapore which she loves "because it's so good for my skin." About the difficulty of choosing curtains for the new house she fights. But local people say is building "on stilts, Malayan-style." that many other jets, delayed for one reason or other, also take off between these hours,
London Airport authorities
lapels, jerks me upright out of sweet dream into night roply that this is quite true-le mare, and throws me back in horror on my pillow.
A night jet is taking off from London Airport. This is my first experience of living in the shadow of the jet, in a village called Stanwell.
For 100,000 other people around the 15-mile periphery of the airport this awakening is commonplace enough, though the physical reaction is not by now always so violent.
Certainly one
doesn't sleep very
Though they were both up
the jets have been delayed through no fault of their owners, "But we're pretty strict on the
whole," I am told,
Obviously, though, such rules and regulations cannot endure if London Airport is to maintain leading position in the world.
Can nothing be done? Is nothing being done?
much after waking up at 1.15 like that. at midnight that, night- The price
the Constella- After the jet come tions, the Viscounts....around 3 a.m. I am awake again, thinking it is time to get up because someone is using a vacuum cleaner round the house; but it is a plane tuning up half a mile from the house at the end of the runway.
Children
By 7 a.m. there are seven cigarette stubs in the ashtray beside my bed and I have read 243 pages of "The Thousand and One Nights," which my host, Mr Trevor David, has thoughtfully (no doubt) placed there for my entertain. ment.
In all, I suppose, I get three and a half hours' sleep.
Andrew David, aged three, and Hughie, aged two, both slept well, I am glad to say.
Comet jet passed over at 23:06
At London Airport one run hours, and u Boeing jet at 23.23 hours, and children love way is being extended so that There are already rules that jets any excuse for getting out of ls can gain height earlier. bed again.
must gain a height of 1,000rt a built-up Mrs Grace Franklin comes before passing over
cycling round from Stanwell
worse
Moor, which is even for noise than Stanwell, I'm told. Why, I ask does she five there then if the noise is NO terrible?
I am humbled by the reply. "I've lived there all my life," she says. "And my husband has lived there all his life too. And he has been with his firm 22 years.”
At the greengrocer's shop Mrs Nancy Saban says that when the wind is in the north-west they move into their other bedroom. They move back into their normal north-west bed if the wind is south-east. This is a small combating the weapon in noise.
IN THE CITY OF SEX AND SMOG...
area: that they must not change
point.
course before a certain Banks are being built around hangars to deaden the noise of engines tuning up.
Research is being carried on, Mr Duncan Sandys, Aviation Minister, himself admits: "We still know very little about the And, astonishingly, he also fundamental cause of jet nola" says that efforts to solve the problem are limited not so much by lack of money as by "lack of ideas."
In all honesty, the chance of reducing noise by jet aircraft in the near future is pretty negil gible. "'s the price we pay for having the world's best airport" That basically is the Govern ment's attitude,
So villages like Stanwell have to go on suffering.
-London Express Service).
The inquiry that may out-Kinsey Kinsey LOGAN GOURLAY
.......he's now in Hollywood
Hollywood.
HOLLYWOOD and the other Los Angeles suburbs which are searching hopelessly for a city suffer from sex much as they suffer from smog.
At least, that is the attitude of too many of the citizens. They re- gard sex, like smog, as something of a blight-unpleasant and unhealthy but a subject for endless conversation.
genses.
"Someone
Mr Wallace got some su prising answers, many of which remain in his private file.
Incongruously, it was then that it occurred to me that she was potentially the most important woman in the East.
The importance of Han Suyin is threefold. She is a successful writer, the literary lioness of South-East Asia.
lo men of power. happens to be half half. Asian.
She is close Thirdly, shi European,
Trusted friend
In Europe and America Han Suvin is known as the author of best-sellers. A Many-Splen doured Thing, Destination Chunking....And The Rain My In Asia, where her a trusted friend of Chou En-lei. books are read in English, she is Prime Minister of China, and Malcolm MacDonald. British High Commissioner by India
Drink
Fandit
The quickest way to start en argument among the English in the East is to mention her name. The reason is plain to see. In 1951 Han Suyin finished a book called A Many Splendoured Thing. It
by
TOM POCOCK
The extraordinary thing about York to work in Hollywood. ancient that all the. Instead, ebe teaches this book was
oharacters were Asian and African terature at principal
In the an all-Chinese university a few instantly recognisable.
everybody knew who hours a week "Just for fun." "Mark Elliott" was and so did East,
his widow.
'For fun'
She is a doctor and, by British accounts, a very good one. And she writes her books....in Eng- lish for a largely Western reader- ship, again "just for fun."
To their friends it seemed fantastio that the intelligent and sensitive Han Suyin should hurt so brutally the wife and Her host may be
Some of her partisans said Nehru or the king of Cambodia family of "Mark Elllott," or Nepal but everywhere east of
Her books are instructive. Her Suez Han Suyin Iravels in the that she had decided to write
exotic анта that this book only under the stress vivid story of the Malayan war slightly
was called....And The Rain My surrounds women without power of grief, I believe there
another reason, one sympte- Drink makes her attitude clear. matic of the present cladt The British cone in for seara, but with influence.
between East and West.
as do the Malays who accept Han Suyin, who would be the their rule and the Chinese who star of any dinner party between accept their education.
The
qurilis London and Peking, has the lack
Communist to be half Dutch, half Chinese, come out of it best: they are To listen to her she is all ruthless but, in her view, # Chinese and seems to wish she would seem, maintain a fieres was apparently a were. She shares with several integrity,
"Of course, Han Sayin's a novel but it told the frank and million other Asians who inci-
а word.
Singapore. touching story of a love affair dentally regard "Asiatic" as an Communist." you will hear in "I have my views," between a Eurasian girl called insulting
Surin
English complex.
she says and probably they are Whether it is a superiority nearer to the Communist creed reporter called "Mark Ellott,"
She main- which ended when "Elliott" was complex, an inferiority complex, than to any other.
that
friends in her killed in Korea.
a chip-on-the-shoulder or just a ting fashionable trend I do not law. Peking have not lost their sense accept my But I believe that Han Sugin of humour--"they wrote that surprising book as a criticism as constructive." snap of the fingers beneath the noses of the Imperialists, the Coiontalists, the British. She wanted, unconsciously perhaps, to shock and outrage.
Han
TRAVELLER GOURLAY
I
and en
Bitterness
oerlain
t
Recently her travels haye taken her to the opposing camp. the kingdom of Cambodia →→ "The king is a Thost intelligent man," Here she is getting the novel on which she is now woric- ing. It is a story of political murder
R
"Cambodia," she says, this m I would not say that lan
eastom Ruritania. You kill your Suvir là "anti-British." Her books are published in London, enemy by sending him a parcel from London came ber Srst with a bomb in it. Everywhere acclaim. She is obviously you meet quiet Americans who delighted that her daughter, now whisper. Don't tell anybody but at the London School of Eco- I'rn in Intelligence. Cambodia nomics, is a success in England. is a small charming country The happiest time of her life, which plays up to everybody ant it would seem, was spent in so gets the best of everything.
This is exactly what Han British colonies, Hongkong and
Suyin has done. And becearGE: Singapore.
But when she talks about the of this one can see a symptom that Far East and British there is the edge of bitter- of promise
nest, I asked her about the Far West may be able to live British now in Singapore, "They together calmly and contentedly. are fading away gratefully," she
said.
Friendly
Wiret did the Singapore Chinese think of the British?
While to some of Han Suyin's "They hardly notice them." Chinese friends the British may What about the pre-war sill be "red haired devils," British settlers in the East? many of her Indian friends "Like Mont Blanda little must as so many Indiana do, white at the top and a mass regard their former overlords in of brown,, black and yellow a sensible and adult way. By all beneath."
accounts, Anglo-Indian relations Already some of them,
WAS invited for a Han Suyin admits that she is
are remarkably friendly and particularly irate husbands, have
the drink with Lucifie lonely living in Malaya and natural.
There, somewhere in. been writing and telephoning to complain that their wives
tellectually rewarding e in middle of the gulf of suspicion, When he worked out
she took part in the original survey Ball at her Beverly Hills would lead a more exciting, in
mis- house; the house she was London or New York. Yet she is the charming, clever Han statistics he found, for example, have been
as successful given when she divorced her fiercely defends her hot steamy, Suyin. A woman that three out of 10 of the represented in the book.
had extra-marital ex-
celebrated husband, Desi corner of the East. "I do not in the West in the East. She want to go to London," she says. is a famous writer. She could perience up to the age of 32 and Mr Wallace steadfastly.cm-
"As an Asian I want to live in be a powerful force for tolerance phasises that Tone of the Arnaz recently. four out of 10 up to 45.
and peace, I think she known women questioned in the survey
Asia."
She turns down offers to it. appears in the book and that all characters and events are purely
appear on television
WOTLEG
There were very few Don't Knows. None, I'm happy to say, in answer to the last ques.
An omnipresent threat, not bookstands. The Kinsey Report were much better subjects for
a Sunday school manual sex surveys than men. always visible but always there was to sting the eyes and affect the compared to this."
Said Mr Wallace: Louella Parsons, the other
Mr Wallace is himself happily Various bodies of upright self-appointed queen of Holly. Once said, 'Never tell a man he tions.
an ex-magazine citizens make regular attempts wood, wrote: "After I read the plays poor poker and is a lousy to clear it away and purity the book I felt I needed a bath and lover. Asking a man sex ques married to atmosphere. For a time the disinfectant to get rid of the tions means invading the pro- writer to whom he dedicated the
tective barrier of his manliness book. pollution seems to disappear, shine."
-It must show no cracks. but back it comes to corrupt insidiously.
For long spells it hangs over the suburbs like a grey, un- laundered blanket.
This is one of the spells, The main
cause, or the primary causative factor, as the jargon- loving citizens would say, is a new novel entitled, "The Chap- man Report.”
HEDDA WAS
SHOCKED
DISSOLVED
IN MARTINI
I have just met the author, Mr Irving Wallace.
So
he is more prone to exaggerate NOT FOR
or lie.
"A woman is different,
As the
the receiver of love, not aggressor, she needn't prove
MONEY.
two children.
The
fictitious.
shoddily
who
She was also given half of the fortune they HK$36,000,000 have made from "I Love Lucy"
and other television series.
Mr Arnaz got the house in electric However, his publisher has set Palm Springs plus an aside a fund of HK$600,000 to golf cart, among other items.
Miss Ball is preparing for a Mr Wallace told me that new alm with Bob Hope, and s pay for any legal actions.
musical until recently one of his neigh Broadway
entitled bours was the illustrious Joan "Wildcat
She said: "This Crawford. He asserted un will be my first-ever appear~ : equivocally that she had not unce on the stage.
taken part in the survey and
"I'm concentrating on work in was not represented the from now on. I don't need the But 1 money. I'm a tycoon. book in any form
I was disappointed. But only don't want to think about the!
He has herself. She can afford to show older, a boy of 12, has helped her confusion, anxiety, failure, his father on the research for momentarily.
his previous four books, which When it became known in have been mainly
But he made no the expensive air-conditioned graphical.
He is a bespectacled, studious locking man of 44 years, who dissatisfaction." said that he has devoted at least 30 of them to the sporadic study of women and sex.
HAND
autobio
THE GLAD `
THIS is
The idea for the book first suburb in which he lives that contribution to the Chapman came to him after meeting he was conducting a sex survey Report. women at parties who dissolved than 300 women
sticking-
divorce and all that.
"As I said in court, I couldn't put up with Desi's Jekyll and Ats of temperament. He has been a nightmare |
- for two years, NOW. I want to
is the only place forget all about
msches to light my
Forest Lawn, the opulent immortalised by Evelyn Waugh
he received applications from To date the book has made
She handed me the book- cigarette. all amore than HK$1.5 million for their inhibitions in martinis and more
con- Wallace. He expects that his
were Inscribed "The It is about sex, of course, confided in him about their anxious to reveal their
fusion, dissatisfaction, etc. final earnings from it will run ly) which advertises under- They
Arnazes" in gold letters with taken and burial grounds at romantic twirls. More specifically, sex reports marital and sexual problems.
He said. "I needed a frame- But Wallace restricted his into millions,
old and investigations.
Sucking an Then one even work for the idea.
survey to 77 married women
The every other corner. It looks like being an
plaster-patched pipe, which
ABSOLUTELY bigger maker of money and con- afternoon, in a daydream fan- between the ages of 18 and 45.
sex They were asked to answer refuses to discard, he said; troversy than Dr Kinsey's tasy, I thought of the
report: This would give the 10 questions, I offer you a few want to make it clear that I report.
make money or create cheap in "The Loved Ones," announces I am staying in the tion it has joined the best-seller women about the private, part answer).
Within a few days of publice- opportunity to question many of them (which you needn't didn't write the book just to burial ground for the natives ALL MOD. CON.
sensationalism
gleefully in large posters that it Beverly Hilton Hotel, Hist. Four million copies will be of their lives."
The women in my book have is the only place which offers a
• Before your marriage, wES
where bedside buttons con- your general gilitude towards a classic forebear Flaubert's mortuary and cemetery in one. sex one of aversion, indifference, Madame Bovary, the classle
trol the radio, aircondition- zotlelpation?
tion of the bored, It shows a band reaching, for ing and television; I have
married woman the telephone. The message, I Do you wear a nightdress in What I'm saying in the book, fear, is that your very last a neat little réfrigérator
among other things, is that there movement should be a crab for too. are too many of them in the telephone to ring. Forest suburb ilke the one I know and Lawn. use us background!
stil
issued as the first printing of
the paper-back edition. Long- ANXIOUS
man the British publishers,
have paid a record HK$42,000
TO TELL
advance for the British rights.
scetes
in novels
Darryl Zamick has bought the Mr Wallace spent the next hed or sleep in the nude? film rights for HK$1,050,000 two years doing research on plus five per cent of the gross other sex reports and conduct-• Do sex takings another record.
stimulate you? ing his own investigation. Nomadia Hopper, the He made some fascinating dis-
Do Hollywood columnist who con- coveries, lite the tact, for
'you wear undergarments? idem herself an authority on example, that the first sex Do you have extra-marital most subjects, has lasted this survey was made in 1815 for the sex expériences?.
the filthiest YMCA. "It is staterbuť:
he had. Did you have pre-marital book I've ever zend and He also discovered as he shouldn't even be allowed on always suspected that worden sex experience?
living/Shellay: Winters said "&
1 Mr. Wallace the same community, In
expensive 10-bedroom use, and I have no reason to But he is leaving shortly for aidogrele: "I was a Beatnik protracted holly in Europe,perors they had a name partly to test and party
for it." escape his neighbours,
But, the cold tap in the bathroom produced nothing but scalding hint. water. When 1. complain- da member of the staff said: "You have a re- frigerator.
London Express Service).
New
hope she knows. ft,
Lowton
press Service).
Friell
"M'sieur, & tell you it will only aggravate the situation
كالات
if you do bring down the sputnik."
AUJOURSCHEI,
Folies
Borgere
ir
"Don't you realise by now that photogra
other