RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30900, 5 November 1965, Page 34

RANDOM REMINDER

THE DEMON DRINK

The Christchurch spring has not been entirely satisfactory, but then there never has been one that was, as it were. Yet there have been some warm days, really warm ones, and it was on one of them that a friend was heavily engaged in trying to restore the disorder brought about in his garden by approximately twelve months of neglect. , He is not, let it be understood, a really keen gardener, who goes to bed on Friday night and can not sleep because of excitement at the thought of being able to rush out first thing next morning and start shovelling compost about madly. But he has a

sense of responsibility, every now and then, and so there he was, sweating it out. And although he had other virtues, such as not being a drinking man in the New Zealand sense of the term, he had his mind firmly fixed on a halfbottle of beer in the refrigerator.

As he slaved away, he worked resolutely at his resolve to keep the beer until he was done. He could almost feel the first of it sloshing down his parched throat, he could see the tiny rivulets of moisture on the glass. Around about high noon, he left his task and made for the beer. It was not there. He recalled with horror bits he had read about women using beer

to rinse their hair, but remembered with relief that his wife was also in the garden, on the other side of the house. He asked her about the beer. She told him cheerfully that she had given it to a climbing rose. Then she looked up from what she was doing and saw him. As she backed away she explained hastily that she had read that if a climbing rose was not doing too well—and hers wasn’t a drink of beer was very good for it. There's not much more to be said. The rose has responded spectacularly to the treatment, even if the man and wife are still leaving each other notes. And the cause of all the friction? McCready's Peace.