THE CHINA MAIL. MONDAY, DECEMBER 19, 1960.
Blue lights for fire engines? LIFE ON H.P.
THEY WOULD
BE EASIER
TO SEE
VIVID
blue, flashing
lights, may be install.
cd shortly an all
Britain's
fire engines, police
and ambulances.
cars
New regulations, to improve the warning signals on priority vehicles, are now being drafted by the Ministry of Transport.
nut
TH
Blue will almost certainly be the colour adapted. Why amber? There is too much
\x31\. in the roads present maximum
The of a seven- watt bulb will be raised to 48- to blue lights will still show clearly.
The warning bells on fire up-
THE WORLD
OF SCIENCE
by
Peter Fairley
RUNAWAY? No, a radio-controlled tractor, towing a four-furrow plough now in was on a State farm in Rumia. Six of them have come off the production line so far. They carry built-in sensing devices to follow automatically the line of the previous furrow.
Two systems of remote control are being tried. In one the
- robat is controlled from the cab of a manned træotor and
works in parallel. In the other two men with radio sot alt at opposite ends of the field and work four tractors. Automation on the farm was originally the idea of a tractor. driver named Loginoy. Any British tractor drivers with
similar kinao?
Gourmets in space
simply to measure the density.
of the upper atmosphere.
But the event will be of per- ticular interest to Britain
TIE popular den that to save
space and prevent spillage because the satellite is the first An astronaut's food will const to be launched by Scout, the Fatirely of tasteless, vitamin- rocket which wil tift
Thire packed sludges which can be British sputniks next year. kqueezed from a tube is not Density of very thin air can changed, shared by diedelans working on be worked out by measuring Ha Amerlea's man-In-space pro- drag on the balloon. IL will gramme.
swing between 370 and 2,000 miles up. A small radio beacon inside WII enable trackers across the work to plot its course and speed. are
pliance may also be
or amplilled, suMAI,
Noise tests
Tests of the Fire Research
Itrad Stution and
Research Laboratory to find the
Blust effective alarmn have just ended. The results are now before the Central Fire Brigades Advisory Omer
Council experts.
und
Home
They believe that tasty, int food will be vital to moralo
They are designing a choker weighing only Sib. And drawing up menus based on can- red,
dehydrated and Instant foods. Typical day's ration is:
Porridge, laced with cinamon and sugar, coffee and bread for breakfast; turkey and beef sond- wiches, or spaghetti, for lunch; chunks of veal, mashed potatoes or rice, and buttered vegetables and sweets for dinner. Fruit after every meal.
immediately before take-off,
the sucrest of the they
astronaut should eat a high carbohydrate. to increase tolerance of attitude. high protein and low
fat meat
Suggested menu orange sher- bet, frozen strawberries, sweet
Dls18.
Anyone for Mars?
The scientists tried out sirens, Klaxons. two-tone horns and bells against a noise background typical of a lorry-driver's cab. They found that what mattered was the LOUDNESS alarm.
From this point of view, the two-tone horn-widely used
on The Continent-was best.
But many people would an- pose a change from the track- firmal bet1. And there are Ri- rendy two-tone hurns in use on SPARTA PAIN.
So the ful answer may be to amplify a recording of Bre-bells,
rather as roving ice-cream mer
Enter the Scout
NY minute now, Amerlies will launch a new form of satel-
In miniature
Why the spots? They are to reflect sume of the sun's heat. and maintain an even tempera- ture inside the balloon. They will cover some 20 per cent of its surface.
27
And here (aboya) to a radio-controlled seeder which can be ind other for sowing от dep fting of fertiliser.
versity of Mains. He has been The satellite-messuring 12ft. analysing Hocks. Mosellen, Bur- across-will be
miniature gundies and Bourdeaux. In some aluminium envelope still whiri- version of Echo, the 100fl he found traces of arsenic, cop-
per and boron. ing in sunce, Thousands of T'hese, he concluded, probably people in Britain have scen cume from fertilisers and Echo glowing like the brightest ehemlen sprays used at the star in the sky. They may spot vineyards. The quantiles were the "baby" too.
amalt but still enough to affect laste and bouquet,
Buy Echo has partially dedated. So the new balloon will be mode of layers of plastic and alumin- ium four times as thick.
Arsenic in wine
was wet and cold
with all the proper ANNE SHARPLEY talks to one
melancholy of an Eng lish winter-but 18-year- old Margs had no fire.
"i try not to have a fire,” she anys with the same light nb negation of other women who try not to take sugar in their too.
of 1960's proud possessors
I've got loads of nephews and nieces."
One thing was ċertain-she wasn't going to have anything else on the HP. "It's wonderful Nor had Bhe caten much, the way you can get things. I "Snack," sho saya-and' mean we wouldn't have been "hacks" tum out to be
ably to take this flat without it. one meat ple.
would we? But it's a terrible worry."
Baby first
"I don't mind so loro as she's all right" she says and baby. Debbie (after Dobbie Reynolds) sits on her mother's knee six-month-old unawarTNESS the fact that her plump well- being must cong first...
in
of
It seems querulous and spell breakding to point out that the, Margs, might foll through cold
and under-tourishment. Mother-love and optimism Bre powerful magic in the room, and in superstitious
sympathy only eroteca one's Bagers and says nothing to harm the aura of hope.
Fairy-tale
Her thin young arms wound happily about Debbie. "At first, you know, I didn't wont a baby, But I'm glad now. She's evin- pany."
happened
Everything in Morgs's life has in unquestioned sequence, each thing dealt with as it happened.
Like meeting David, She was at sehol till, aged 14. was working down a manlole and shouted at me. At first I thought he was Irish, and i don't like the Irish much. But then I noticed he hadn't got an Irish accent and I thought I fancy him,"
In pictures
shurter
He was two inches than she was, but all the girls fancied him, she said.
It was not casy to form a pic- ture of David from these words
For this is a fairy-tale and to prove it-Margs is happy-
All around her are the bright but they were obviously the two gifts that fairy
gordmother points she thought most worth called "Hire Purchase" brought. Communicating. Some
MARGS, baby Debbie-and thai £89 cocktail
cabinet.
more
flat, baby Debbie-and babies to follow: "You can't just have one, can you?"
She gives a sudden Illuminat ing pleture of her honeymoon.
"It was the hottest week
the
of them practical-ike These were their wedding pic- the new three-piece suite with "tures. She, sweet and fair, ha cout which no British family can Laken her glasses off for just one summer before last. We went
be founded it seems.
day of glamour. He had his to Southend and David loves ly- And others. a shock to the dark hair brushed to unparallel- ing on the beach. He con De practical intelligence of an out- ed smoothness. And out
of there all day-but I can't. So ! sider, who does not understand those wedding pictures this just used to get up and go and that the fairy godmother called consequence. The two-roomed walk around by myself." "Iliro Purchase" can plant temptation in young love's way,
Lon the cocktail cabinet that cost about £80 or something
wouldn't know."
It sits against the wall like a mighty Wurlitzer, glittering with Artit.cial aids of this kindlasses and pot ornaments that have done much for British Margs and her soldier husband, agriculture. But it would be a David, Wor in fairgrounds pay if they were allowed to become commonplace in vine yards, where wine has flowed where distinctions of flavour are so subile.
chants signal,, their customers litr balloon with a rash of sturbing report about pol- satisfactorily for centuries and
with a tune.
paint-spota. Ils
For Christmas...
NESTLÉ
task
lution of wine comes from will be Dr Hans Eschmauer, of the Uni-
A gift that
always pleases
Finest Swiss Chocolates
KESTIA
"when wo were courting." It lights up when the Hd is lower- ed (to reveal rows of cocktail
sticks but only a bottle of tonic bottle of and a near-empty whisky). In terms of a posses- ston-It is a knockout,
"There it was'
"I jual came home one day and here it was. I nearly killed my husband. That was when I was pregnant and I sold we wanted a cot more than that."
Another lapse was the £25 encyclopaedla "a chap came round and we bought it."
But she looks at It all proudly now. The bedroom suite with its dressing-table and two war- drobes. The kitchen cabinet (food contents, a few packets, botiles and one egg). The shelves her husband made.
filled with dozens of small or- naments in what seems to have been astronomic success at Lis coconut shies.
"Only £78 to go. It's not so bod," says Margs of living hay- pily ever after on the instalment plan.
Out of the £7 10%, she gets a week from her husband and Army allowances, she pays £2 10%, rent.
Victorian
They have a two-roomed- flat (no bathroom, share lavatory with three other familles) at the top of one of thore tall, red-brick Victorian houses that make Kl- burn an area of gloom and de- eay. "Everyone says we're dead lucky to have found 31. There were loads of people after it."
Twenty seven shillings a week goes on hire-purchase repay- ment.
"I have £2 a week left over for food by the time I've paid hire purchase and insurance and shillings for the gas meter," says Margs. "My husband comes home from Warminster every fortnight and I have to rush around borrowing for his food. I don't eat much when I'm on my own."
BCC the
Yes, hire purchase was a prob. lem. But she hadn't let the in- stalments fall behind. Except for the weeks when she had to pay the electricity and the gas.
"When my husband was called Into the Army he went to the aliop where we got all furniture and asked if he could pay it off more slowly like. But they said it wasn't their fault if he had been called up.,
"He worked at the London Electrielly Board before and got quite good wage and wo thought perhaps he wouldn't be called wp. bút họ was. Our friends told us to pay them only Gl. a week on the IIP, just so long as they got something. But I couldn't do that."
Marga had entered a commit- ment and she didn't want to apoll her, shining now married
lite with agus and unkept prombes.
"He won't be out until March 3, 1902, Two more Chris1- maren!” she says. "I can't send anyone a Christmas present Unis your, 1 aren't half choked. And
"Phew! Demolishing the damn thing is more dangerous
than
India
building it!"
IAN FEDE
Somaliland
Cyprus
Malaya
Pakistan
There is nu questioning, no irony in her nature. She spende lonely cold days in her two- roomed flat now. But she thinks the is lucky. Everything is all right and it's going to gel belter.
"Once I get that £78 paid off
I shall have 27 shillings more to spend on food," she says In modest happy hope.
(Landon Express Servicy).
Nigeria
thana
Ceylon
THE BRITISH EMPIRE
Cummings