RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31655, 16 April 1968, Page 20

RANDOM REMINDER

DEEP FREEZE

This is certainly not a case of necessity being the mother of invention, but no opportunity of improving our economic position should be overlooked, and it seems obvious that a great new field of enterprise has been opened up by a single, small incident at the Hermitage not long ago. Visiting the Hermitage was an American tourist, and he was one of the more enthusiastic of the many who have been there. He loved the place, and the setting, and the people, and he had no complaints to make about the service at all. The camera just about jumped into his hand as if it was alive as he went here and there, saw this and that

And one of his more memorable experiences was being taken by aircraft to land on a glacier. He came back from the trip bubbling with enthusiasm, and with only one regret; for once, the camera had not been with him. But he stated a wish to take a picture of the plane and the pilot, and was told that, all being well, they would arrive back at the Hermitage landing field very shortly. So down he went to the strip, duly took his picture, and then observed that the pilot had in his hand an enormous and attractive fish. The American pointed out that the pilot had not had the fish when he saw him earlier. The tourist

asked him where it had come from. “1 just picked it up on the glacier,” the pilot replied. • This sent the American into raptures of delight. This, he reckoned, was the greatest, and just wait till he told them back home about the deep-frozen fish, thousands and thousands of years old, and still in perfect condition. He photographed the pilot again, and the fish, and the glacier, distantly. And it hardly seemed the right moment for the pilot to explain that colleagues operating from the West Coast side sometimes brought a fish for him when they flew in, burying it beneath the glacial ice and marking the spot with a stick.