RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30882, 15 October 1965, Page 28

RANDOM REMINDER

SHOP

It is very gratifying to observe, in the young, a developing sense of community service but the fact of the matter is that usually there is far more pleasure in watching other people’s children exhibiting the desirable characteristic than your own. Because of the inevitable disruption. In at least one Christchurch primary school, there is a drive under way to produce a new library and the cause has been taken up with vast enthusiasm by very little boys with very large ambitions. There are not many boys of seven or eight or nine who do not obtain considerable enjoyment from playing shops occasionally, and with the opportunity of becoming real shopkeepers they have requisitioned garages throughout the suburb. Not all at the same time, of efturse it is a complicated exchange of

visits, for everyone feels disposed to support al) the ventures, and parents, by and large, are willing enough to provide about two months’ pocket money in a week or so—because it is a good cause. If it is simple enough to accede to a request for funds to make purchases at the others’ stalls, the full horror of the business comes only when playing host. The car can not be put away for several days in advance of the sale date. Domestic routine is thoroughly disrupted by requests for the manufacture of hokey-pokey and toffee apples—tasks in which small hands are all too eager to take part. The gathering up of old books and comics is a blessing. But advertising of the project brings its problems. The shoppers begin shopping days ahead, and there is a constant procession to and from the back door. And on the big day itself.

it is like being in the middle of a Giles cartoon. Kitchen jugs of orange drink are consumed the moment they are made, there are hasty batches of fudge to meet heavy demands, prolonged parleys about change, and seizure of such unwanted articles as those gathered from the last mystery envelope day. Give a child a toffee apple and a home shoe-soling outfit and he is, apparently, happy. And when the hue and cry for bargains dies away, there is the involved business of counting sticky coins with sticky fingers. Next morning, the whole coagulated mess of money, amounting to about £3. is carried away to school. And then the inevitable, ridiculous, mad aftermath: a glimpse of the happiness and pride in a little face is sufficient to set the whole revolting arrangement back to its starting point