RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30783, 22 June 1965, Page 26

RANDOM REMINDER

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

We heard the other day that a Filipino fisherman who was carried away by an offshore wind kept himself alive for 21 days by drinking rain water and eating his clothes. The broadcast gave the impression it was a jolly good thing he was found when he was, for he was down to his underclothes and was presumably facing a very difficult moral problem: should he appear naked in the middle of the Pacific, alive, or starve in decency. The incident shows, of course, what we have often suspected: the Filipino fishermen are feckless. If

we fished from a Filipino felucca, we would take dashed good care that we had the appropriate wardrobe aboard every time we left port. The basis would be, of course, a dinner jacket, with clean napkins and fine linen for there’s no point in slumming it even when drifting across the Pacific. And we would want to show Bligh or Heyerdahl or any other Pacific drifters we might encounter that Filipinos have it where it matters. For aperitifs we would have shorts, then sharkskin soup and winkles picked with our own winkle pickers. The fish? Sole, from our own boot.

There would even be a choice for the main course —leg of mutton sleeves or pork pie bat. Burberries and creams would round off a most satisfying meal. We would take a jersey with us for milk and cream. Calf shoes and kid gloves. Colours would be important and we would certainly include such shades as apricot, peach, lime, pea green, duck egg, orange and coffee. Moleskins would make a niee change for the soup. For lunch we would have scones done on a girdle and for fruit a bandana. If anyone stayed for supper, there would always be the brasserie.