RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30845, 2 September 1965, Page 26

RANDOM REMINDER

THE BIRD WATCHERS

Spring, by the calendar anyway, is with us. No period of the year has been, and is, so saluted by the poets over the years. It is the season that blossom by blossom begins, the sweet maiden of the year as well as the young

prince, the only pretty little ring time, the sweet of the year, when loweth mede and bloweth seed and loudly sing cuckoo, when shepherds pipe on oaten straws, when oh to be in England, when the year’s at the S—, when the flowers that bloom have nothing to do with the case and when young men’s fancies lightly turn etc. But spring does not affect only young men. There is a spring in the step and a glint in the eye of all their seniors in September for this is the sea-

son when the flowers come out after their long, sombre winter under duffle coats, rain capes, trousers, those dreadful black stockings, those ugly, clumsy boots, those neck to knee jerseys that would turn even a Venus de Munro into a squat sack.

Whatever the current fashion, a girl tends to look like a girl again in a spring dress. There is a shapely lower limb, indeed two, to admire, as the easterly plays its little tricks. Their rounded arms are again on display. Their hair is brushed and shining, they have slender necks again and they have shape. Like a chrysalis, they slough off the dull winter skin and emerge into the balmy spring air as shining butterflies, attracting the close attention of the collector and exciting the admiration of all.

All? Not quite. We have a friend, a Dutchman with a streak of unrelieved Teutonic gloominess. He is not surprised, he says, that Christchurch has the worst road accident rate of any city In New Zealand. The reason, he says, is that Christchurch also had the prettiest girls. And if you question the correlation, he says it’s quite obvious, isn’t It? Drivers look at preytt girls and —bang. Mark his words he says in sepulchral tones, the rate will be worse this spring when there’s some point to girl-watching. And if you think you can fault the theory by asking how it applies to women drivers, be will tell you that it reinforces the whole thing. Women, he says, do not dress so much to attract men as to impress other women.