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IN THIS ISSUE

• Arthur Pay´s story about a conscientious objector is continued
• Dick Monaghan discusses casting for amateur theatre productions
Kate Brookfield writes from Taiwan
• Peter Weatherby comments on an item in last week´s issue
• Geoff Goodship tells about the troubles of Watson
• LakeBarbara Wear forwards a letter from a young American in Paris
• Tony Lewis forwards a story about the sex of flies
• Marilyn Magid sends the tale of some startling advice
• Barbara Wear, Bruce Galway, Don Henderson, and Kenn Waller recommend sites

Arthur Pay continues his story,

"WHAT DID YOU DO IN THE LAST WAR, DADDY?"

Conscription for National Service was instituted before the start of the war, and young men were called up to supplement the voluntary military forces of the regular army. It seemed that my age group would be included after the authorities had worked through the 18- to 20-year-olds, and I remember my mother was quite incensed when I told her I would object. "They´ll make you join up!" she said. Anyway, when the war had started in 1939 the Armed Services Act required all young men to register for National Service by attending a local registration office, and I went to Grosvenor Park Road to register along with all the other young men born on or after a certain date. Notice was given of times of registration in the national papers.

At Grosvenor Park Road Office there was quite a crowd of people, but only a few who were electing to register as conscientious objectors, and these had to complete and return a form giving their reasons for objecting. It was all very low-key and nothing like the excitement of volunteering in the First World War.

After registration very little happened. Those who had not objected received interview papers and had a medical examination. They were then allocated to whatever branch of the services the authorities felt appropriate.

It was several months before I was summoned to appear before a tribunal at the Law Courts to give reasons for my objections, and by this time many of my age-group had entered one of the three Services and been involved in the hostilities that occurred when the British Army was pushed out of Europe and France capitulated. I continued to work at Waterlow´s and took my holidays, in 1940, cycling with Charlotte in Wales and the Peak district.

I attended the hearing of the tribunal in August 1940. My position so far as the war was concerned is possibly best illustrated by my submission on the form, as follows:

"I refuse on moral and rational grounds to take part in any military activity or to assist the military machine in any way. I believe that the method of war is wrong and futile. Might is not right but it is illogical to attempt to prove it by means of force.

"I cannot and will not kill, or help in the killing of human beings I do not know and with whom I have no quarrel.

"Since I realise that the war is actually in progress and that people are likely to be killed and injured, I am prepared to assist them to keep out of danger and help them if they are injured by serving in the ARP or the AFS as they are at present constituted; but I will not in any circumstances resign my right to judge and act according to that which I know is right.

"I believe my objection to be a conscientious one, since ostracism, imprisonment, or any penalty will not alter my determination to do that which is right.

"I have held and expressed these views for the past seven years."

There were other circumstances that may have influenced my attitude to the war. While I was at the high school we were given the opportunity of studying either German or Latin as a second language, and I took the advice of my cousin, Harry Davies, electing to learn Latin. He said I would always be able to take classes in German, but would have no second chance at Latin.

Among those in the form who took German was Arthur Collis, who, incidentally, was also a conchie. There wasn´t a close relationship between us - he was much more athletic than I was, playing both cricket and football.

However, in 1937 while I was visiting his home, I found that he was making holiday arrangements to visit the Black Forest with another classmate, Charlie Hoskings. I rather forced myself on them and was included in their plan. I certainly held no brief for the Nazi party and was active in the League of Youth against the German and Italian Fascists intervening in the Spanish Civil War. But the German government was very hungry for foreign currency, and offered not only cheap travel on the railways but also additional currency in the form of travel marks.

These concessions, plus staying at the Youth Hostels subsidized by the Hitler Youth Movement, made for a very cheap and informative holiday. We were able to get to know real German people instead of the stereotypes presented in war propaganda. Perhaps the Germans had a point. The seeds of war are to be found in the peace treaties of previous wars.

The following year, 1938, I took a cycling holiday with a companion plucked from the CTC Gazette and this time was able to meet the French at first hand, even if it was only for a fortnight.

Reg Sorensen, our MP for West Leyton, who was a conscientious objector in the 1914-18 war, and later became Lord Sorensen, once said to me, "Give me control of the press and the radio, and within a month or so, everyone will be loving the Germans and hating the Russians." In view of the volte face of the cold war, he was quite a prophet.

To be continued.

Dick Monaghan carries on with his series on

AMATEUR THEATRE

We´ll assume you´ve got your technical problems under control - sets, costumes, make-up - except for one: your theater has no money and no equipment. You need lights that dim and sound effects. Once more you dip into your stash of little-known personnel and come up with a guy (we´ll call him Elmer) who owns amplifiers, speakers and turntables, and, best of all, is a wizard electrician who can open the light-switch panel and make the lights sit up and beg.

Ideal situation? Except for one thing: Elmer, like many bright techies, is a land-mine of ego. And he has an eccentricity: he will do anything he can to follow your lights and sound plot - the way he learned it the first time. Once implanted in his brain, it is there for the duration, no substitutions, no alterations. You have to remember to know exactly what you want the first time you explain it to him, because that will be the last. He has you in a death grip; make him angry and he´ll go home with his stuff.

It´s time now to deal with the cast. Already the dreaded "I´ll-have-my-lines-by-opening-night" and "I´ll get in character when I get my costume" syndromes have appeared and have to be exorcised with great vigour. But you have a bigger problem: your leading lady is working hard and looking good, except for a certain inability to grasp what the villain intends to do with her if the widows´ mortgage can´t be paid.

A melodrama depends absolutely on every member of the cast believing absolutely in the romantic nonsense they´re engaged in. Melodrama players may NOT "wink at the audience." Our young lady, let´s call her Polly, is doing her level best, even to putting the back of her hand to her forehead, closing her eyes and tilting her head to one side when presented with the banker´s nefarious proposal. But she looks as if she´s only going through the motions.

"Polly," you say to her, "do you have any idea what the banker is going to do to you if you agree to let him have his way rather than foreclose on your aunts?" Polly looks at you vacantly.

"Mr. Banker!" you say, "would you please explain to Polly exactly what it is you intend to do to her if you can?"

The banker sidles up to Polly and explains it all, or at least some of it.

Polly´s eyes grow round and her face contorts. Tears come to her eyes, and she storms off the set. It takes the two "aunts" to get her back, some ten minutes later.

"Look," you say, "I told him to tell you that, and I want you to ´print´ that reaction in your mind." It never quite works out. She does her best, but she looks more like she is plain disgusted than terrified by the prospect of surrendering "the crowning jewel of her womanhood" to a lecherous scoundrel.

In the event, it works out because the audience wants the play to succeed (after all, they paid to get in, while you didn´t). They are swept up in the emotions they knew ahead of time would be expected, and they whoop it up. They even buy that ridiculous idea of the mine explosion. They are suddenly quiet after the "BOOM!" in the dark, but when they lights come up and they see the make-up people on stage messing up the appearances of the actors who were presumably shaken by the blast, they quickly realize what´s going on and respond favorably.

When it´s over you can count it a success, but you realize that other than your keeping things on track, the play succeeded because the audience liked the players, and it´s hard to control that.

Next time: The cast party.

Kate and Michael Brookfield are in Taiwan researching the possibility of teaching there for a year. Kate writes about their trip and their first day in

TAIWAN

I now understand the term ´a hard day´s night´! We left Guelph at 9.00 a.m. Sunday morning and arrived at our hotel in Taipei at 11.30 p.m. on Monday, July 22nd. As I write it is now 8.50 a.m. on Tuesday, July 24! My computer is still on Canadian time, so it is 11.30 p.m. Monday at home.

Our flight from Toronto to Seoul, Korea, took 13.5 hours, daylight all the way. We had a three-hour wait in Seoul and the final flight to Taipei took about two hours. We were met at the airport and it was another one-hour drive from the airport to here. I didn´t sleep much on the journey, so was happy to get to bed in this lovely air-conditioned room.

We were up at 4.00 a.m., feeling refreshed and ready to start our time in Teipei. We were not the only ones out walking in the dawn light. Most of the people about were doing morning exercises and/or walking dogs.

We are staying in the hotel of Taipei´s Academia Scenicus (Science Research Academy) so I´m really glad I brought the laptop, although my plans to use it to make the travel time pass quickly were foiled when the battery was dead. I wondered if putting the laptop thorough the x-ray at the airport drained the battery. Anyway, there is free-high speed internet in the room and everything starts up OK now.

Next door to the hotel is the athletic building with a huge Olympic-size pool, so after our walk we went for a morning swim. I am just back from breakfast. I had to ask for a fork as I didn´t feel ready to tackle a western with chopsticks!

Mike has to go and meet his hosts at 10.00 a.m. and I am going to take a bus to the downtown and maybe will do a city tour to get the feel of the place. So far, I like what I see. Everywhere around this campus is clean and the people very friendly and most speak English. But at only 9.00 a.m. it is VERY HOT already. Typhoon Mary passed close three days ago. Seoul had more of it than Taiwan, and at the airport in Seoul it was raining and cloudy. We were told by the man who drove us from the aiport that ´typhoon days´ are like a national holiday - everything closes and nobody goes to work. A bit like Canadian snow days.

More to come.

Peter Weatherby comments on an item in last week´s Tale Spinner:

FEEDBACK

Re your meeting with Geoff and Freddie Goodship, and one phrase caught my attention - indeed, made my hair stand on end. It was "what will happen to the Tale Spinner when this editor spins her last web." Yikes! I cannot contemplate such an event. American troops may invade Iran, the Republicans may win the 2008 election, the Al-Qaeda may inflict an even worse attack on the U.S. than 9/11 ... but please don´t scare me with the dreadful prospect of the editor of Tale Spinner spinning her last web.

ED. NOTE: Any volunteers for the job? ;)

Geoff Goodship writes about

TROUBLE IN WATSON LAKE

We visited Watson Lake recently. There´s trouble in Watson Lake. For the half dozen Canadians who haven´t been there, Watson Lake, population 300, lies just north of the B.C. border in the Yukon Territory. It´s a famous place, receives many visitors, and is just 5069 km from Toronto. Read on.

The first problem is with the name. The community of Watson Lake lies at the shorelines of two lakes. They are named Wye Lake #1 and Wye Lake # 2. There´s no good explanation for why they didn´t name the community "Wye" or "Why". There are several other places in the world called "Why", but as far as I know, none of them are in Canada. It´s not clear why they passed up the possible address of "Why Canada". They could have overcome the problem by renaming the two "Wye" lakes Watsons Lakes. There is a real Watson Lake but it´s several kilometers away from the town of that name.

There´s trouble in Watson Lake and I noticed it the first night we were there. Watson Lake has no dark. I went to bed about midnight and it was still broad daylight; same thing at 2 a.m. and again at 3:00. It´s not just a shortage - they are completely out of dark! In the morning I asked a local about this. He looked like a cross between homo sapiens and a grizzly. "They store up the dark for the winter," he growled. "We prefer it this way."

There´s a transportation problem in Watson Lake. It has no cars. It has trucks, pick-up trucks, and motorcycles, and they are all the same color: dirt brown. There is another problem in Watson Lake. It has no PST. Now figure that one out.

But the biggest problem is a psychological one. Watson Lake is the center of loneliness. Apparently all visitors are immediately overcome with longings for home. Over 12,000 individuals have posted a forest of signs in Watson Lake pointing the direction and the distance to wherever they call home. I never realized there were so many homesick individuals in the world.

You can see a photo of this "forest" for yourself at

http://www.yukoninfo.com/watson/signpostforest.htm

Barbara Wear forwards a number of letters written by Richard Ross while he was studying for a semester abroad. Here is the first:

AN AMERICAN IN PARIS

As you may know, I am spending the semester in Paris. Upon my grand arrival Monday morning, I teamed up with my will and my ego in the effort to translate inhibition into education. The metaphorphis, I am proud to say, has begun to take shape.

I am the only male in my group of about three from American (notice I use the adjective, not the noun) out of the 45 students I´ve seen in the program. My host family is not by any stretch of the imagination, traditional. My host mother is a sweet and an erudite professor in 18th century history. She speaks little to no English whatsoever. My host father, on the other hand, was once able to speak fluent English, but sadly, he is now in a bedridden state of M.S. In the room next to me lives a fellow student as well, a French 19-year-old, just beginning the rigors of med school. The mother and father have three beautiful children who have recently moved out.

For those familiar with Paris, the apartment is located in the affluent Arrondiessement 16 on the very top floor overlooking la Avenue de Mozart. As far as tourist activity goes, I´ve so far taken a boat down the Seine, and have just returned from a run around the Eiffel Tower. In the evenings, I often meet with my good friend and long-standing summer resident of Gloucester, Mass., Oliver Horvitz, who also is studying here for the semester.

The French women are so consistenly attractive that my neck aches from its constant rotation. My mother was also right in that the Parisians wear black and only black. I swear it seems as if every time someone departs the subway, they are headed to a wake or funeral home. And as many of you may know, black is not the paramount color in my wardrobe, so I am oftentimes the white sheep in a herd of black.

There is so much more to discuss, but I must go outside while it is still sunny. And believe me, the sun is as rare here as the English language. Please feel free to email me; I am sure to respond instantly with this new Blackberry gadget.

For those receiving this email who are inhabiting Europe at this given moment, beware - I will visit. This may include my sister Gabrielle in Geneva, and my British friends, Jonathan and Veronique and Gracey!

Rob Gillis, I think I added you to this email chain, in which case, I wish you the best in your return to America and look forward to some major catching up this summer; to the Nevada House, I know things will be even crazier without me hassling you to clean the dishes; my Bentley buddies, thanks for entertaining me over break! The mudbox gang - you know who you are - I still expect a visit.

Many more beatiful people, I hope, receive this email, and I hope those who do are running, smiling, and most of all, dancing!

Tony Lewis tells us

HOW TO TELL THE SEX OF A FLY??

A woman walked into the kitchen to find her husband stalking around the room with a fly swatter.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Hunting flies," he replied.

"Oh! Killed any?" she asked.

"Yep. Three males, two females," he answered.

Intrigued, she asked, "How can you tell them apart?"

He responded, "Three were on a beer can; two were on the phone."

Jack Handy rationalizes drinking:

THE VALUE OF WINE

Sometimes when I reflect back on all the wine I drink, I feel shame. Then I look into the glass and think about the workers in the vineyards and all of their hopes and dreams. If I didn´t drink this wine, they might be out of work and their dreams would be shattered. Then I say to myself, "It is better that I drink this wine and let their dreams come true than be selfish and worry about my liver."

Marilyn Magid sends this story about

SOUND ADVICE

A man went to see the Rabbi. "Rabbi, something terrible is happening and I have to talk to you about it."

The Rabbi asked, "What´s wrong?"

The man replied, "My wife is poisoning me."

The Rabbi, very surprised by this, asks, "How can that be?"

The man then pleads, "I´m telling you, I´m certain she´s poisoning me; what should I do?"

The Rabbi then offers, "Tell you what. Let me talk to her. I´ll see what I can find out and I´ll let you know."

A week later the Rabbi calls the man and says, "Well, I spoke to your wife. I spoke to her on the phone for three hours. You want my advice?"

The man said yes, and the Rabbi replied, "Take the poison."

SUGGESTED WEBSITES

Todd Wemmer is a co-worker of Barbara Wear who is working on his PhD, which involves looking for stories of lost and found personal photographs. If you have a story to tell about lost and found photos, you will find details and instructions at http://www.lostandfoundphotos.org

You will also find Barbara´s story on the left of the site.

If you are into frustration, this url sent by Bruce Galway will keep you busy. It is Gilligan´s Island golf, and the address is http://www3.telus.net/public/a7a55952/islandgolf.htm

Don Henderson forwards this URL for an article which claims that older diabetes drugs are as good as the new ones: http://tinyurl.com/ysrtu7

Kenn Waller, a long-time subscriber, and his wife Anne took out a license a year ago to serve their friends and acquaintances as cruise consultants. He changes hats in the evening from his day job as a land line surveyor and is having a great time in a completely different industry. If you are thinking of taking a cruise, or of retiring to a cruise line as the old joke suggests, check out his website: http://www.cruiseshipcenters.ca/kennethwaller

You may also read this newsletter online at http://members.shaw.ca/vjsansum/

People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy - and I keep it in a jar on my desk. - Stephen King?