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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Seaforth News, 1960-01-28, Page 6Aihlfear Rush At Royal Post Office As soon as it was announced that the Queenis to have a baby early in the New Year, the Court Pest office at Decking - ham Palace (and at Balmoral) was flooded with telegrams and cablegrams. • The tiny coloured lights on the telephone Switchboard flick- ered and flashed as innumer- able calls were put through, The post next morning brought many sacks of mail containing good wishes and greetings, Ever since then the Court Post Office has been working at full pressure and so, it will continue, getting busier every day right up to the time when the baby is christened. Some idea of the likely amount of extra work can be gleaned from past records. When George V died some 15,000 telegrams were received 12,000 were dealt with at the Silver Jubilee and more than 10,000 at the Coronation of the late King George VI. The Court Post Office is al- ways on the move. Normally it is part of Buckingham Palace with a staff of thirteen men. No women are employed. Even on the telephone switchboards no "hello girls" operate. If ever you are outside Buck- ingham Palace you can see the Court. Post Office next to the guard room, behind the pillars at the extreme lett-hand corner of the Palace, The Court never• moves with- out the Court Post Office, for the post office services must be maintained whether the Court is at Balmoral, Windsor, Sandring- ham, Holyrood, Ascot, Cowes or on bhe royal yacht. Throughout the day and night there is contact with every part of the United Kingdom, and with the whole of the Common- wealth. It is necessary that the Queen should never be out of touch with her ministers. At any moment it might be necessary This Saves Money! cava WL/A120 Thrifty! Easy! So satisfactory! Make your own slip -covers by following our illustrated step- by-step method. You'll turn out a most professional -looking job! Slip -cover a chair or sofa! Step-by-step Instructions 841 for a basic cover; six other types. Send TRIRTY-FIVE CENTS (stamps cannot be accepted, use postal note for safety) for this pattern to Laura Wheeler, Box 1, 123 Eighteenth St., New Toronto, Ont. Print plainly PATTERN NUMBER, your NAME and AD- DRESS. Nevi! New! New! Our 1960 Laura Wheeler Needlecraft Book is ready NOW! Crammed with exciting, unusual, popular de- signs to crochet, knit, sew, em- broider, quilt, weave—fashions, home furnishings, toys, gifts, bazaar hits, In the book FREE — 3 quilt patterns, Hurry, send 25 cents for your copy. for her to have a telephone con- versation or telegraphic coni muuieation. In its main essentials, the Buckingham Palace Post Office is like any other post office, A•t a long counter clerks transact ordinary post office business with the Palace staff who want postage stamps,postal and. money orders, stamped station- ery, parcels and letters register- ed, and to send telegrams. Apart from the Palace staff, the only members of the public permitted to use this post office are the soldiers from the adjoin- ing guard room, and they can only buy stamps and .postal orders, and post their letters in the Palace post box when on a tour of duty, If you happen to be outside Buckingham Palace at about six o'clock any week - day morning you will see the familiar red Post Office vans drive' in to the unloading point. 'From, here the bags of letters and parcels are taken to the sorting office. By eight o'clock' the mail will have been distributed to all parts of the Palace. Naturally, the largest pile of letters goes to the Queen's pri- vate secretary, and the size of the mail varies considerably, es pecially on Her Majesty's birth- day, when it is enormous. An outsize stack is always placed on the desk of the private -se- cretary to the Duke of Edin- burgh. The Press Secretary, Commander Richard Colville, receives a heavy mail, and so does the Master of the Royal Household. Letters are . always delivered on time. The machine -like pre-, cision of the postal arrange- ments is frequently praised by resident visitors, particularly guests from abroaa. As fast as the mail comes in, just as fast does it go out. Correspondence is handled rapidly, and an en- deavour is made to reply by return if possible. Messengers from the various departments in the Palace are bringing sacks of letters from morning until night: there is no question of saving up letters for the last collection. "Post Early and Post Often" is the practice. Members of the Royal. Fam- ily and officials of the Court make considerable use of the telephone, telegraph and wire- less because they save time. Telephone lines radiate from the Palace in a 11 directions, a n d there are one hundred and eighty extensions in the build- ing. Although the Palace is con- nected to the public telephone system, scores of private lines link it with all the other Royal residences, Government De- partments and, of course, to • 10, Downing Street. When the Queen is at Bal- moral the private line between there and the Palace is in use the greater part of the day. The• men operators are about the slickest and most courteous in the world, You might ask if operators hear anything when members of the Royal Family are on the line. The Post Office has in- stalled a special secrecy device which makes overhearing im- possible. This system is widely used between Government De- partments and by people hold= ing important positions. A Royal birth, death, marriage or coronation will make tremen- dous demands upon the, facili- ties. To meet these, additional equipment has to be installed end the staff may be tempor- arily increased. Many of the State telegrams are in code, and these are first decoded by Post Office experts. Prince Charles and Princess Anne always. enjoy a visit to the Court Post Office and like to watch the sorting of the letters, the dexterity of the telephone operators, the teleprinter at work and the work of the Post Office engineer who spends all his time on maintenance. But perhaps their greatest joy is when a new stamp is issued. When they see the gleaming coloured sheets of 240 stamps, each bearing a picture of their mother, they naturally remark: "What e nice picture!" No one k more p' -d with this than the Quren n l=eaf, FINAL CURTAIN FOR MISS SULLAVAN — Marquee at the Shubert theatre in New Haven, Conn,, is dark in wake of the dearth of actress Margaret Sullavan, 48, who was starring in a pre - Broadway showing of a new play. Found unconscious in her hotel room, she died en route to hospital. SHE WILL NOT LEAVE — The face of 74 -year-old Mrs. Elizabeth Prettyjohn. reflects the years that she has dived by the sea. It's. too many years to leave, though her home, battered by the waves repeatedly, is the sole remaining building of the village of Hgilsands, England; which was washed away in a 1917 storm. The rugged individualist has lived alone sincethe death of her brother six years ago. iti HRONICLLS INGERFARM �,enaou� o.ewe� Well, you would never guess what happened here on Christ- mas. Christmas, of all days! We woke up to a cold house, that's what. Sometime during the night our furnace gave up the ghost. We thought it had blown a fuse but it hadn't, and yet the re -set button wouldn't work. So, Christ. mas Day though it was, we had to put in an emergency call for repairs. The man was here with in an hour, managed somehow to start the furnace again but said if it stopped it would not start of its own accord as there was a defective switch. He showed Partner what to do and said if he could get hold of a new motor he would be back. But of course• he didn't manage it — that would be too much to expect at Christ- mas. However, the weather wasn't cold and as we had all planned a family gathering at Daughter's place in Toronto we took a chance and went We came back to a cold house all right. Bob managed to get the furnace going once again but it stopped permanently .during the night. However, the me.n arrived with a new motor by the middle of the morning and so everything was 'fine within the hour. We could only think how lucky we were it happened when it did and not at a time when it might have been ten below mem. 1 suppose that kind of thing happens in plenty of homes but what made it unusual here was it happened on Christmas Day. We were glad we were not hold, ing Christmas here. That would have been a little awkward to say the least, . At Daughter's we had a won- derful time on Christmas Day. All five grandsons were good but noisy. Dee's boys looked like little cherubs with their white shirts and bow ties. Naturally, the illusion was soon dispelled! Cedric, our youngest grandson, sort of stole the show he was so good and friendly with every- one. The rest of us were sad- dened to hear that a well -liked nephew had suffered a ruptured appendix just after arriving with his wife and children at his nate, elite' home to spend the holidays... On our way home Christmas niglt we came through the Exhibition grounds and saw the SALLWS 5A LIES a trr hr "You roll your own. Now let's see where you put the filter p marvellous decorations. Ross was so thrilled his eyes were almost popping. As if that were not enough when we got home he found Santa Claus had -left him the working model of a power shovel. That was just what the doctor ordered. Of course Santa had been very generous all round and — shades of summer — one of our presents was a pair of. garden chairs! Perhaps the greatest excitement concerned a small parcel that David had put on the tree for Grandma. "Look, Grandma, that's for you. I did it all my own self. Open it, Grandma — see what's inside." Well, when the time came to un- wrap the parcels I found it was a candle in a painted plasticine holder that he liad made at school. He got more pleasure out of doing that for me than from all the presents he received for himself, Nephew Kiemi was in Toron- to and had to return by bus to Peterborough in that awful ice - storm. We have not yet heard if he arrived all right. We are naturally anxious. Conditions here at that time were wet but not dangerous. I tried to talk him into staying in Toronto over- night but oh no, he had ,to get back and to return by train would be too late. Well, now it is Monday morn- ing and it is a pretty grim loolc ing world outside. Wet and icy but apparently nothing here to what some districts further north are experiencing. This district seems to be a regular . little Shangri-la during any kind of stormy weather. May it so con- tinue. Isn't it strange, almost every year we get a stormy • period in between Christmas and New Year. Years ago it didn't make too much difference but now peo- ple travel the highways no mat- ter what the road .and weather conditions and the loss of life 'is often staggering, Partner is out- side at this moment opening up ditches to let the water away. 1. mean cracking the ice. He says, keep .the ditches open and you have flooding problems licked before they start. I hope he will be right again, I wonder . , , until we get bet- ter organized, may I be forgiven if I use this column to thank those of you who were "so kind to send •us Christmas greetings. Your good wishes were much ap- preciated 'and in return 1 cel.' tainly wish you all the very hest of 'everything during the com- ing year. We know we can't have good luck all the time buf here's hoping the• good far out- weighs the bad, now and throughout the year; "This roof leaks so badly that the rain comes through," com- plained a tenant to his landlord. "How long is this going to con- tinue?" 'I don't know,"vas the reply "I'm not much goo at weather. forecasting," EIrns — Or Robins Which To Save? Which would you rather have, elms or robins? This may sound like a rather frivolous subject for a seventh . grade debating team, But in the Milwaukee area, it, has become a real ohoice. It is not generally put in such simplified terins.. But a recent report cf the Uni- versity of Wisconsin seems to indicate that Wisconsin cities must snake the ohoice: Elms or. robins, Some 90 per sent of the trees gong bhe streebs in Milwaukee and its suburbs, as well as in many other Wisconsin cities, are elms. Moat of them are full grown trees. From- the air, many parts of Milwaukee — including some areas that look shabby and r•u'ndown to a pedestrian traveling through them _ look like a park. It cannot be dis- puted that •the' elms are among Milwaukee's finest natural as- sets, A few years ago, many resi- dents here began to worry about those fine rows of elms. The 'Dutch elm blight was discovered here. Did this. mean that the streets would soon become tree- less? Said bhe foresters, "We'll start. spraying and the blight will go away" And they did start 'spraying with. DDT solutions of various strength and the else blight, while' not precisely van- ishing, has' been kept at bay. That 'made the tree ,enthu-' sleets' happy, but the bird en thusiasis were soon up in arms. The bird enthusiasts claimed the DDT ,was destroying the robins. Not so, said the • tree' enthusi- asts. Until recently, this difference of opinion between the two species of nature enthusiasts was heated but inconclusive, chiefly because no one could prove anything. A bird enthu- siast would say that she hadn't seen a robin on "her lawn all summer. A tree enihustast would counter that he 'had a lawn full of birds, all of them making the dawn noisy with their songs. But then along carne the uni- versity scientists with sone. facts. 'The tree enthusiasts — while not admitting for a mo- ment.'that the faote .mean what they seen to mean — now are en -the defensive. What Professors Hickey and Hunt did was take a census of songbirds in two Milwaukee suburbs, Wauwatosa and Shore- wood, .and the city of Janesville, all of which have sprayed their elms. Then they took a similar count of feathered heads in un- sprayed areas of Madison, Stoughton, and Portage. The re- sults were quite decisive, writes Babert W. Wells in The Chris- tian Science Monitor. The three unsprayed areas averaged 175 pairs of robins per 100 acres. Janesville had 31 per cent as many, Wauwatosa 30 per cent and Shorewood — where the DDT 'has been applied most liberally .— only 2 per 'cent. Shorewood had only .11 per cent as many common grackles, 11 per cent as, many house' wrens, 12 per 'cent as many mourning doves, 35 per cent as many blue jays, 10.per cent as many Baltimore orioles, and 33 ' per cent as many starlings. Wau- watosa and Janesville had more of ,most " varieties than Shore- wood, but 'far fewer than the test areas. On the average, the research- ers found 407 pairs of all kinds of birds per 100 unsprayed acres. Shorewood, by contrast, had only 41 pairs — an average 0f less than a pair for each two acres. The uhiversity team conclude. ed that DDT sprayed areas were "a trap" for birds that migrate;.•, there to neat. Spraying in the ,., trees' dormant season might spare May migrants, but never- theless tapes a heavy toll of bird life, they said. The report has been attacked aS incomplete for various rea- sons, including the fact that it does not take into account the effect of the salt solution used on roads to melt winter ice, the lessening of insect life on which the birds' feed, the rise of shop- ping centers which reduce birds' feeding areas and even the habits of the. angleworm. Still, m a s t neutral observers are inclined to go along with the Janesville forester, James E. Harvey, who said there's' no doubt that spraying has an of - feet on songbirds, "We have to make a choice between using it (the DDT) and losing our trees," lie added, whioh brings us right back to where we began: Robins or elms. Week's Sew -thrifty P NTED PATTERN 4915 seas 12••-20 • G, ►tL i44 WONDER blouses — saw easy and so smart! They take so little fabric, you can whip up all three for practically pennies. Printed Pattern 4915: Misses' Sizes 12, 14, 16, 18, 20. Size 16 top style 1% yards 35 -inch; mid- dle 17/s yards 39 -inch; lower 2 yards 35 -inch. Printed directions on each pat- tern part. Easier, accurate. Send FORTY CENTS (stamps cannot be accepted, use postal note for safety) for this pattern. Please print plainly SIZE, NAME, ADDRESS, STYLE NUMBER.' Send., order to ANNE ADAMS, Eox 1, .123 Eighteenth St., New Toronto, Ont. ISSUE 4 — 1960 CHARLEY'S EX — Long-haired Susan Magness, 24, ,holds hands with her daughter, Susan Mores, 7 months, in FloIlywood. She was divorced from Charles Chaplin Jr, in November after a year and a half of marriage, Chaplin's father, the comedian, requested that' Miss Magness bring .the child to Switzerland, where the elder Chaplin lives, for a• visit.