RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30586, 31 October 1964, Page 38

RANDOM REMINDER

FRIENDS IN NEED

A note from a reader expressing amusment at an M.E.D. truck carring the usual “Do it better electrically” slogan while the crew from it huddled around a thermette provides another of the coincidences and conjunctions which colour each day. Down in Ashburton there is a young English farm worker who owns a very fine English car which looks rather like a Rolls-Royce. He was beneath it, making some adjustment, in an Asburton garage when a stranger came in, mistook him for a mechanic, and addressed him on the folly of people buying such expensive cars. The man walked all round the car, kicking the tyes moodily, peering at this and that. “Can’t understand the mentality of some blokes” he said “buying a great flash car

like this. They’re not content with an ordinary car. It must have cost him a packet. Some people have more money than sense." And then he was off, not giving the owner time to explain that if the car looked magnificent, it was largely because he looked after it so well and polished it with such loving care; that it was 12 years old; and that it had cost him only £3OO. In Hornby, a women wanted to go to Wellington to a wedding. Her husband, in the middle of a frantic campaign to fence and path his property, said they could not afford it. He took counsel of a friend, and after the facts had been stated, the friend advised him simply to put his foot down and say they could not go to Wellington. Two weeks

later the friend discovered that the invitation had been to his brother's wedding. Then there was the car containing four youths who were the worse for liquor. They rolled the car over, and although they were not hurt, the car was very badly damaged. They went to a house nearby and telephoned for assistance. Two days later the driver arrived at his insurance office and told the assessor he had been travelling at 25 miles and hour and had bounced over a gutter. “Now let’s have the true story" the assessor said. “That's it” the young fellow said. The assessor sighed. “You don't recognise me” he said. “I'm the old fool in dressing gown and slippers who helped you at three o’clock the other morning."