RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31049, 3 May 1966, Page 28

RANDOM REMINDER

PARDON ME

There’s nothing like not doing today what can be left until tomorrow; but occasionally this pleasant way of life has unfortunate repercussions. As it did in a Christchurch suburban home the other day. The young man of the family had, through following the precept outlined above, woken to the realisation that he had not done his home-work. This demanded immediate action from other members of the family: early breakfast, the early bus to school to give himself tinie to remedy his error of omission, and transport to the nearest bus stop, some distance away.

His mother, of course, got the thick end of all this. She had to fix his breakfast, she had to get the car out, she had to take him to the bus. And notwithstanding her best efforts, she was a little late. So she had to pursue the bus. It so happened that she is a teacher at a secondary school for girls, an institution noted, as much as its contemporaries, for the air of propriety about all its activities. And as she whipped past the bus, she noted that its passenger complement appeared to consist almost entirely of her own pupils. The pupils observed her, too. She had to stop, far

enough ahead of the bus to allow her son time to alight and embark. The bus was a little distance behind, it took time to draw up and take on its passengers. And it gave her time to note that the windscreen of her car was badly in need of a clean. So she took a rag and got to work. The bus come to a stop just alongside, and the assembled pupils had all the time they needed, and more, to observe that their maths or classics mistress, or whatever she was, had managed to dress herself in a blouse—but amidships, and below decks, she was not so well set out: she was in her slip.