RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30846, 3 September 1965, Page 26

RANDOM REMINDER

POWER OF THE HORSE

Only two years now till D for Decimal Day, but perhaps we were a mite previous in predicting recently that the proverbs and phrases that have grown up round £ s d will disappear when decimals take over. After all, apart from those pampered parasites of the racecourse, the horse is ail but extinct in this country, but its habits, its ways and its accduntrements have passed into the language and are unlikely to be eradicated. This, indubitably, is the age of the motor car, but because of that do we talk about declining to test the compression of a car won in a national competition. No sir. The proverb remains. You don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

We wouldn’t think of changing utility vehicles in the middle of the river. No matter how high the price how steep the sales tax, how long the waiting list and how ridiculous the trade-in offer, no-one is likely to offer to swap their kingdom for a car. The horsewhip still strikes terror into the hearts of newspaper editors all over the world and whoever heard of lucky car tyres? The most irresponsible of the youths who buzz the Square are never accused of car play—it’s horseplay in cars. The proud among us may buy majestic vehicles to impress their set of Joneses, but no-one claims they are riding the high car, do they? Nor do poli-

ticians get on to their pct hobby machines. No-one accuses militant old dowagers of being war cars. In fact, even the cars run by courtesy of the animals they displaced—by horsepower. If anyone put the trailer before the tractor, the incident wouldn't rate a truck-laugh. It just wouldn’t make car sense. Cavalry are still cavalry, no matter how mechanised and in spite of all the repaint jobs, no-one talks about a car of a different colour. And how could they have brought the good news from Ghent to Aix if I spring to the handle and Joris and he; I turned it, Dlrck turned it, we turned it all three Not a spark could we get from the old Model T.