RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30028, 12 January 1963, Page 15

RANDOM REMINDER

MATERNAL LONG-STOP

Summer’s smiling days are often regarded as the best of the year, particularly by such dedicated minorities as cricket writers, nudists, and those who make a living by taking other people’s clothing from lines. The summer, for these people, is a natural environment; the cricket writer in winter can only listen to overseas commentators, the nudist is all over unbecoming goose pimples, and the snowdropper is in trouble with his wife for bringing home clothing only half dry. But when it is analysed, summer brings more troubles than the other seasons. December’s examinations upset the children, February means the payment of rates, March an effort to

meet income tax demands. And January is. the most popular camping season, which is a trying business for mothers. In January, hundreds of teenagers go away camping with friends and when they depart from home, they leave one of the tent poles, all their dean handkerchiefs, the first-aid kit, and a worried mother. When it comes to an emergency, the head of the house is equal to any occasion, but she does suffer from the firm conviction that a mm away camping will be suffering, every hour, from malnutrition, sunburn, insomnia, and the attentions of all the brazen hussies who have left their own worried tn/Owim behind them.

Before he goes, she will prepare a vast list of his requirements; Scott probably went south with less. There will be the warm singlets for a change in the weather, several extra blankets, galoshes, a hot-water bottle, his cough mixture ... And he will be invited to write each day, to telephone immediately if anything goes wrong, and even if ft doesn't. He will bo tostructed to be in bod early, to keep dose to the shore when swimming, to make sure ha gets plenty of vogetablas . . . And when be gets back, brown, fit and fabulotm, she will my, with all the usual feminine sagacity, that there ia nothing like making a boy seU> rehant.