Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Salient: Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 30, No. 14. 1967.

Oh Santa do come quickly..

page 6

Oh Santa do come quickly...

Dear Santa,

You should head south early this year as you'll be meeting abnormal traffic complications in Sweden and poor landing conditions in New Zealand. It's been a bad year for snow. Frankly, it's been a bad year in lots of ways. The new dismal currency is pretty, but less plentiful than the old stuff and everyone is longing, more than ever, for the merry season of getting and receiving. More than ever you will be welcome as the symbol of the good that comes without referendum. Nihil referendum esse.

I enclose my 1967 application for no-questions-asked gifts. I have kept it short as some of the items are unwieldy. Annual Scrounge List (Div Phys Ed, students for the benefit of; in trip; delivery date; trad.)

Please may we have: Claus One — a swimming pool on the University Campus. Provided it is clean, warm and conveniently sited, you can ignore Olympic specifications (which in many matters are controversially ambiguous these days). Non-swimming politicians — the famous few who swim prefer to swim in rivers — and designs of the shape of university facilities to come may measure value by versatility, so please make the pool:

(a)Long enough for next year's Victoria rowing crews to practise Irish training methods in:
(b)Deep enough for marine research when the Zoology Laboratory at Island Bay overflows:
(c)Big enough to provide, in the digging of it. employment for 2000 students over a long hot summer;
(d)Strong enough to support three or four Squash Courts along one wall and a rifle range along another. If the pool were close to the RankineBrown building, the Smallbore Club could undertake to shoot the required holes in Computer tape dangled daily down from the DSIR. thus saving the Department many punching man-hours and the Club the cost of targets.

Claus Two — Another playing-field or several fields. 5000 students on to one Boyd-Wilson field won't go and couldn't even if they would and even if it weren't unfit. Please send us an all-weather. flood-lit playing area suitable for playing and competition (in hockey, tennis, soccer, athletics, etc) throughout the year whatever the weather and a special paddock for our new All Black.

Give the University teams Home Rule in our time: home grounds for home teams. If student sport is insipid it is not because our players are unskilled in the friendly punch-ups and fun-filled referee baiting that the discerning crowd enjoys, it is because they are committed to combat on foreign fields without the happy hysteria behind them of supporters made stronger in numbers and persuasive power by their territorial advantages.

Claus Three — A vast nylon ski slope. We need at least another 400,000 toothbrushes or a piece of matting 30 yards x 10 yards and you're the only one I know who can smuggle such things past You-know-who these days. By the way. make sure antler velvet is intact when you present yourself to agriculture and Immigration.

Claus Four — a few additions to the gymnasium, like a Sauna clinic, a refreshment bar and a room in which to keep the Karate Club. They escaped from the Dance Room, through the walls, and obviously require something similar to the facility being sought by those who would have a creche on the campus. Perhaps the two groups could combine to form the first Punch-n-grow Society and share facilities.

Calus Five — a concrete path which appears to lead from the northern end of the Rankine-Brown building diagonally across a well-known bare brown lawn in the direction of the Student Union Building but in fact by a devious illusion leads students repeatedly and irresistibly towards the Gymnasium.

Claus Six — a few statues on the old "health and physical vigour" to line the avenue from the planned Piazza del Library to the Gymnasium. Perhaps you could pick up the odd discobolus on your way through Florence. If funds are low, you might obtain more cheaply a couple of those incomparable 1938 Nazi concrete magnificences. It beats me how they can be so cheap considering how much concrete went into them. Please. no Clay models of heavyweight boxers.

If your baggage allowance allows, please include also: a bundle of signposts mostly marked "To the Gymnasium"; a supply of indestructible badminton shuttlecocks: and a lid for the Evans Bay Track.

We are truly grateful for what we have received. Thank you particularly for the now Vice-Chancellor, even though the last one wasn't fully used up.

Please don't think we turn to you only as a last resort, even though, for the present(s) at least, it seems you are.