RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31275, 23 January 1967, Page 24

RANDOM REMINDER

LOOKING AT A GIFT HORSE, OPEN-MOUTHED

By this time of the year, the last clearances of Christmas gift problems have been resolved. For the first few weeks of the new year, many retailers must feel that there is little going into the till, and that their assistants are heavily engaged in changing the presents people have sent each other. One man we know, who shall be X, is unlikely to solve all his Christmas, 1966, problems for some time. He and his wife received a Christmas gift parcel from a Mr Y, a business friend of Mr X. When they opened it, they

found it contained a quite extensive collection of chinaware. They looked at the gift. They looked at each other. They agreed that they really did not like the pattern or the shape, or, in fact, the gift very much. They noticed that it had come from a leading store. So back, after a while, to the store they went. They put the parcel on the counter, they opened it, and they told the assistant that they would like the purchase price of the goods credited to their own account at the store. These negotiations were hardly concluded before

they noticed there was another woman at the counter. She was Mrs Y; and she obviously was unaware of what Mr Y had sent his business friend, Mr X, and Mrs X. She admired the chinaware. She thought they were simply lovely things. Mr X could say nothing but occasionally achieved a spasmodic movement of the head. Mrs Y continued to admire the gift. She simply, she said, loved it In fact, she liked it so much that she thought she would buy it and take it home to show her husband. She did.