RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29791, 6 April 1962, Page 18

RANDOM REMINDER

THEY NEVER COME BACK

One of the most common forms of self-delu-sion among men of advancing years is that if they cared to make the effort, they could be as fit as they were 10 years earlier, and compete quite comfortably with their juniors. Only those who do care to make the effort discover the humiliating truth, that they can’t. There have been instances of gentlemen taking part in vigorous sport until they have entered the tricky seas between middle-age and senility, but they have always had the advantage of playing year after year, so that their declining powers are not obvious to them—only to others. But once give the game away, and its up. There is a sad, former aching Canterbury Rugby representative who, very little short of 40 years of age, came to the conclusion that this business of coaching teams was not

good enough; with some strict training, he thought there was no reason why he should not play a few games again, even if for one of the junior teams. His wife has learned from long experience the danger of trying to divert a Rugby maniac from his grim purposes, so when he put on an old, faded red and black jersey, and covered it with a couple of sweaters, and began making little tentative running movements up and down the hall, she just got on with her knitting. She heard the front door close behind him; training had beSun. . . >ut in the night, our hero filled his lungs with good, clean, autumn air, braced his shoulders, and set off down the hill on which he lived. He covered some 50 yards and paused for a rest. His breath even then would have extinguished the candles on Grandma Moses’ last

birthday cake. He went on, with the air coming and going with sounds suggestive of the tide round Cave Rock. He found his legs were beginning to shake. He struggled on, thrusting one foot after another. A slim shape passed, running easily: a girl athlete on a late season training run. Stung to further effort, he lurched along in the dark rather like an unmanned steam roller. Then, with a shrill shriek of agony, a leg muscle snapped, and he could not have been more upset had he been Kreisler losing a string in the middle of a Carnegie Hall concert. He dragged himself painfully to a telephone and called home for help. His wife came in the car and picked him up. And this woman, this light of his life, this helper in troublous times, this paragon of virtue, what did she do? She laughed until the tears ran down her face.