RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31236, 7 December 1966, Page 38

RANDOM REMINDER

BY THE DAWN’S EARLY LIGHT

There are more romantic, more rewarding, and more exciting vocations than that of the night porter at a city hotel. To most of us, it would seem a somewhat dreary task—opening the door to latecomers in varying stages of health, cleaning up after the day’s thundering herd has departed, making the early morning tea for the reluctant early risers. But there must be some compensations, and one of them, apparently, is that a Bleeper dragged from his

blissful pillow at something like 5 a.m. is likely to be off-guard, and to make the day the better by some unconscious, or semiconscious, humour. Recently in one of the Christchurch hotels the guests included a man very well known in another part of the South Island. He is familiar to thousands of people because of an association with racing and trotting, and If he has other interests among them animal husbandry, and some of its off-shoots

—horses are very much part of his life's pattern. He had to be called at the deadly hour of 5 a.m. and the night porter did the job, taking with him a cup of tea. In the dreadfully cheery brisk way night porters have at that hour of the day, he asked the man why he had to be called so early. The racing man’s instinct was near the surface, if his eyes were still half-closed. He said he had to go out to West Melton to watch some pigs foal.