RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30947, 31 December 1965, Page 24

RANDOM REMINDER

CATCH AS CATCH CAN

As s final thought for the year, we would point to the need to remember day by day, that no matter where you are, or what you are doing, there are likely to be unseen eyes watching you, No, were not getting on to the Big Brother line, just recording a fact or two, for a change. Could there be a quieter part of Christchurch than Press Lane, not long after midnight, before the cars and delivery trucks really get going? But even here, it happened. A night worker just released from toil was in the lane and he saw, approaching him, a colleague who had the misfortune to be using a

walking stick temporarily. He hobbled along, his stick tapping, and with the night sky and the harsh white lights casting vivid shadows, he looked like something out of a Hitchcock film. So our friend thought he would provide the horror, by startling the limping one by beating very loudly on some garbage cans with a stout stick. Which he did. It had the desired effect —his friend jumped several feet. And so did the drummer, when he turned and saw, standing in the dark recess of a doorway beside him, a constable of the police. Once his discomfiture and feeble smile had gone, he recalled playing golf

with a friend who was rather new to the game, and not too versed in its skills. Our man put a ball into some bushes, his friend went into a bunker. Blow for blow they struck, one in the bushes, one in the sand, for some time, without positive result. They looked like a pair of carpet beaters working in close concert.

Ultimately the man of the trees emerged, and the bunkered one, thinking his opponent was not looking, picked up his ball and tossed it on to the green. But the friend saw him — and so did four stout old gentlemen, outraged on the next tee, looking like Judge Jeffreys, in quadruplicate.