Introduction:

This comic one act play “The Never – Never Nest’ is written by Cedric Mount. This drama exposes the “Buy Now Pay Later” marketing system.

Jack’s economic background:

Jack and Jill, the couple, called their house a little nest. Jack’s salary was six pound a week. But he bought the house, the car, the furniture and the radiogram on monthly installments but the installments came to more than seven pounds! For the extra 2 pounds he would borrow from the Thrift and Providence Trust Corporation.

Aunt Jane’s comment

Jane was Jack’s Aunt. She had the principle of “ready cash” and she never borrowed money from others. One day she visited Jack and Jill. She thought Jack had bought all the things with ready cash. She came to know that everything was bought in installments. So she criticized that even though Jack used the car, he was not the owner of it. Only the steering wheel, one of the tyres and two of the cylinders belonged to him. The installment purchase seemed absurd to Aunt June, since had the policy of “Ready cash”. The juxtaposition of the aunt and the couple adds to the humour.

Interesting part of their life

Aunt Jane gave a cheque to Jack and asked him to pay off at least any one of his bills. Then Aunt and Jack left. On return Jack asked Jill for the cheque because he wanted to pay off instalments on the car But Jill had already sent the cheque to Dr. Martin in order to pay off the delivery charges of her baby said “Just one more instalment and the Baby is really ours”. The most interesting part of their life was this: They had not fully paid even the hospital charges for the delivery of their baby!

Conclusion

Therefore Jack and Jill can never own anything fully. Even the baby is not theirs. So the title uses double negative Never Never. “Nest” refers to their house. The end of the play is ironical though an exaggeration. It is a satire on the materialistic bent of the mind of the modern man.