RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31542, 2 December 1967, Page 25

RANDOM REMINDER

SACRILEGE

New Zealand’s image in Eire might very well have been improved had the All Blacks been able to fulfil their engagements there; and it is a pity something was not done to make up the ground lost recently in Sligo. Two girls who graduated as New Zealand State Registered nurses at the Christchurch Hospital have been there, and while no doubt their efficiency and charm made a very good impression, they produced one of the greatest gaffs known to a country given to colourful conversation. The girls went to the United Kingdom intent on sandwiching holidays between periods of intense working and saving. Their first

vacation was to the Emerald Isle. They hired a car, but this contract so reduced their funds that they had to relinquish it to its Dublin owner with the holiday only half gone. So they had to hitchhike from the outskirts of the city, and they were gallantly helped aboard a car by two jolly Sligo farmers who had been kicking it along for three days at the Dublin Horse Show. It is a long road from Dublin to Sligo and, with the extraordinary thirst for which the Irish are known, it was evidently a dry one. Fortunately for the hosts, the way is dotted with towns and hamlets, each and every one

affording opportunities of making accurate tests to determine whether the Irish thirst is still needing attention. They were hospitable farmers, and they insisted on treating the girls. There were twin shudders of horror when they asked for lemonade. The farmers of Sligo were clearly of the opinion that it was their duty to convert their passengers into what they described, in their delightful tones, as dinkum Kiwi colleens. They persuaded their guests to have a Guinness apiece.

It was here that international amity suffered a sharp twinge or two; The first girl to taste her drink put it down. “It’s awful,” she said. “It tastes just like stout.”