RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30712, 30 March 1965, Page 24

RANDOM REMINDER

TURNING THE TABLES

You lucky people, they said, living down here in town all year round. We just don’t know how we stand it up there in the country and we just had to have a break. It’s really wonderful. The air, rich and smoggy, is a real tonic after that thin country stuff and we love the way the sun just shows through the clouds instead of glaring down from dawn to dusk all the time. The roads and pavements are so solid and firm after that springy, grassy land we have to scramble over and the traffic is a joy. Its busy hum sends us to sleep every night, we enjoy the thrill of skipping across your streets ahead of all those bonnets and there’s really no sport

quite as exciting as jumping claims at parking meters against all that competition. Worth every penny you pay to the panel beater, that. And the challenge those meters present in always having some change in your pocket really keeps the mind alert. We love the fun of Friday night shopping, too: the pushing and the shoving, the dodging and the hacking, kept us in stitches. And the repartee of the shop assistants shows that the art of conversation is not really dead. Bit of a nuisance having everything in one big store, perhaps, but we loved the exercise. It's wonderful how cheaply you can live. too. We’ve had ducks and trout from

that funny little stream running through the town. We’ve found places where they put out groceries of all sorts for anyone to pick up and it seems that if you climb into the tourist class through the back door of the buses, you don't have to pay anything at all. But the really stimulating thing, and what we’ll miss most during the long winter up country, is the thrilling conversations you hear in the buses and bars and shops and offices. In the country life’s just a rat race. You hear nothing but stock prices, money, wool sales, money, horses, money, cars and money. What a thrill to hear someone talking about the weather too.