RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30471, 19 June 1964, Page 20

RANDOM REMINDER

SLEEP, THE GREAT HEALER

There are many of us who, if not engulfed in a tide of debt, seem to struggle very little nearer the ultimate beach of security. We bob up one month, look like drowning the next, and so go on year after year. Perhaps it is more interesting, in a way, than wondering how best to use all our money so that it will produce even more.

The battle for financial survival is unrelenting, and the irritating part of it is that we all seem to need so little more to balance the budget. The carrot dangles there week after week. This has led one gentleman of our acquintance to come up with a somewhat novel scheme, but one which, he thinks, will see him right He has come to the firm conclusion, after years of bitter battling, that all he needs to give his financial state the solid basis it needs is to do nothing, for a week. Simply nothing. This is his plan, beautiful in its simplicity. He proposes to put it in action during the next school holidays, for the scheme

involves keeping his chilcf ren home for a week, and thinks that if he keeps them away illegally the whole business might be blown up in a court fine. So, next August, his family will go to bed and stay there for a full week. He is not a very imaginative sort of man, but he has worked on the details carefully, and he is sure that the savings effected by a week of passive resis-

tance to the daily demands on the pocket will be enough to put him right. There will be no depreciation for instance, in the family footwear. There will be no-one screaming for money for bus tickets, or a new bicycle tyre; his wife will not go out shopping, for she will spend the week in bed too. And so will he. taking a week of his annual holidays. He will not have to stump up the price of a few theatre tickets. The power bill will be heavily reduced, for the family will stay warm in bed, or not, according to the individual reaction. Naturally, there will be a heavy saving on the car, which is usually driven every day and which

costs him, at a modest estimate, £lO a week in depreciation and running costs. There will of course be a substantial reduction in the laundry turnover at the end of the week, thus making a great gain in washing powders and the like. Clothes, too, will last just that bit longer. But the main saving will be in food. This man has a large family, each member of which has quite an enormous appetite. For this one week, there will be no bread delivered, no milk, no meat. The day before it starts, his wife will be ordered to mak.e several large containers of wellwatered soup. On the Saturday, the last day of the week the younger members of the family are to be permitted to thrust a few nourishing crusts in to their portions of the soup. The man is convinced it will work. And if needs be, there will be a similarly spartan period in the December holidav.c >'» had hoped he might include Christmas in it; but he feels the costs of a divorce might upset the fine balance of the arrangement