Postscript . .

A smALL friend of mine has just come back from visiting the United States with her mother, chant- ing the rhymes and jingles she came across there among her fellow seven-year-olds. One, which seems to have little or no tune, and dates from just before Presi- dent Kennedy's inaugura- tion, goes:

Kennedy's in the White House, Waiting to be elected; Nixon's in the garbage can, Waiting to be collected.

The other, which goes to the tune of 'Whistle While You Work,' shows a fine cynical attitude towards the whole American constitution:

Whistle while you work, Kennedy's a jerk; Eisenhower has no power, And now it doesn't wi:4(1

Children, clearly, cock a: shrewder and more disillusioned eye at adult goings-on than we are always aware of—as much here, as over there. I recall being told a few years ago how a very old English skipping-rope rhyme had been brought up to date. The old version showed a rather touching resignation to the inescapable fact of heavy infant mortality—perhaps it dated from the days of the cholera epidemics:

Mother, Mother, I feel sick : Send for the doctor, quick, quick, quick!

Mother, Mother, shall I die? Yes, my darling, and I shall cry.

How many horses for the hearse at the gate?

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. . . •

The twentieth-century, or Welfare-State, version which came to me four or five years ago from the back alleys of Norwich, goes:

Mother, Mother, I feel sick : Send for the doctor, quick, quick, quick !

Mother, Mother, shall I die? No, my darling, and do not cry.

Send for the doctor, send for the nurse, Send for the lady with the alligator purse!

Penicillin, said the doctor; Penicillin, said the nurse;

Penicillin, said the lady with the alligator purse. . . .

Vive la difference, say I—and the sooner welfare workers really can afford alligator purses the better. I have every sympathy with the Pedestrians' Association and its aims, and I wish nothing but well to the 'Pedestrian's Bill of Rights' that it is circulating to town-planners and the like, and that it proposes to debate at its annual con- ference in April.

All the same, I think more people would read the document if the document were more read- able. It must be contact with government de- partments that leads public bodies to use such phrases as 'the scope of necessary remedial measures' (in the very first sentence of the Bill of Rights) and 'essential considerations in recon- struction measures.' And then there is all the town-planning jargon—Irontagers' and 'way- leaves' and 'cross-falls,' whatever any of those may be. And I notice that what used to be a lay- by, a silly word anyway, which always baffles foreign motorists in Britain,. has now become lay-bye,' and even sillier.

Once upon a time it was journalists who were accused of mangling the language, but now it is civil servants and all who have to dO with them= which includes the armed services. I well remem- ber writing the history of an infantry division, and the soldiers who were supposed to check my MS for military inaccuracies being unable to keep their hands off my English. They crossed out the phrase (used of a platoon that had run into trouble) . . more than they had bargained for'; wrote 'journalese!' in the margin; and sub- stituted . . more than they had anticipated.'

. . And there, by the light of a policeman's torch, they were discovered making love on a tombstone.' News of the World, Januarj/ 29, 1961.

The grave's a fine and private place But some, I think, do there etnbrace.

I don't often go into pubs and, when I do, I don't usually drink whisky. When I do drink whisky I usually take it neat. So what with one thing and another I have only just tot around to noticing that more and more publicans—in London, at any rate—provide bottled Malvern water at the bar for those discriminating drinkers who prefer (as most serious whisky-drinkers do) plain water to soda-water in their whisky.

Schweppes have owned the springs in the Malvern Hills where the water comes from for fifty years or more, and they bottle it themselves.

They tell me that the virtue of the water is its purity and its tastelessness. It is so pure, in fact, that it can be used as though it were distilled water for topping up batteries; but it is the tastelessness that commends it as a water to go with whisky. Schweppes are also proud of the fact that whereas they used to sell it at 4s. 6d. a dozen big (28 oz.) bottles in 1916 and at 8s. 6d. a dozen in 1939, it is only 10s. 6d. a dozen now.

Little did I think to find myself devoting my weekly wine paragraph to water, and to taste- less water at that. But I am consoled to find that the late Maurice Healy, wittiest of cenophils, thought highly of Malvern water ('which I am told is just honest ILO,' he wrote) as art after- dinner sluice for neutralising the effect of rich foods and rare wines. It was high time, anyway, that I found some little fact with which to in- terest my Scottish readers. They, too, are God's creatures.

CYRIL RAY