Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 9, Issue 11 (February 1, 1935)

Weighed in the Scales

Weighed in the Scales.

Seeing that we seem all at sea it is safe to assume that the social swim is a somewhat fishy business. Truly, there are divers fish in the social scale, ranging from the big bait-snatchers and the glib gate-crashers down to the tiny tiddlers who tiddle and toddle about the basement of the social structure. Betwixt these two extremes are the fish who are content to flap a fin in a mildly middle-class manner merely to keep themselves politely poised above the flat-fish and below the flush fish, and to earn their salt by the swish of their prows, while they ignore the social hook-line-and-sinker which so frequently lands an ambitious fish on the rocks. The flat-fish, of course, are content to stick-in-the-mud, knowing full well that they would only let themselves down by lifting themselves up. They recognise the danger of high thinking on a low plane and prefer to look where they are going—and then not to go. The octopus is a social outcast who inevitably over-reaches himself in so many directions simultaneously that he never knows whether he has grasped what he is after or whether he is after what he has grasped. Consequently he is one of those lonely business men who wonder why nobody loves them. Anyway, if he did go out and about, he would be the death of the party. The crayfish is another socially impossible product of marine endeavour, being a “tough guy” who practices the “shell game” and “puts in the nips” into any fish who is not nippy enough to keep his distance. He is so hard that the only time he is known to blush is when he is “boiled”; but even a “boiled” crayfish may be excused for blushing in the company in which he so frequently finds himself. But, apart from all this, he is not even a fish. Some say that he is a fossilised sea-boot with the legs on the outside. In any case, he wears his eyes half an inch ahead of himself so that he never quite catches up with the scenery, and thus his social ambitions (if any) must always be half an inch beyond his reach.

The shark is a social “bite”; whether it be a grey-nurse or a blue-nose, a mako, a barko (or dog fish), or just a plain narko (or snatch-cat); its only ambition is to nip into the social circle for its pound of flesh, fish, or fowl. Whether it wears fins or frills, gills or twills, spots or spats, it is just a social hanger-on which is difficult to shake off. Verily, the social swim is a pretty kettle o' fish. To put it wildly:

The social swim is full of fish,
Who paddle, puddle, swank, or swish,
According to their social whim—
For every fish must sink or swim.
Some fish swim high and some swim low,
And some are quite content to know
That they can flip a friendly tail
Midway upon the social scale.
Some fish are climbers, others stay,
Like oysters, in their beds all day;
Or, like the flounder and the sole,
Are satisfied upon the whole,
And seldom, by ambition's snare,
Can be induced to “take the air.”
But all the fish who work and play,
Except the octopus and cray,
Are indispensable, we deem,
As adjuncts to the social scheme.
The climbers, and the slinkers sly,
The swordfish and the little fry,
The whale, the whelk, the stingaree,
All puddle in the social sea.
But fish who're wise will never wish
To fly, unless they're flying fish,
Because the upper social air
Is sometimes tragically rare.