May 10

I Received recently a letter from a reader in Ngaraunga who asked me if I had not noticed that the quality of glass they put into mirrors these days was not as good as it used to be and that the outline of the face reflected in it is a lot fuzzier than it used to be. I am glad that someone else has noticed this, which I take to be just a symptom of the subtle slackening of modern standards. For instance the hills these days are a lot steeper, and they seem to have a way of stretching out distances between places that were a few minutes walk apart ten or twenty years ago. Another thing, clothes seem to shrink a lot more than they used to, especially round the middle. They seem to be building staircases in houses a lot steeper than they used to. And something should be done about the breweries, their beer isn't a fraction as good as it was a few years ago, and they have done something to it so that you can't drink as much as formerly.