RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31702, 11 June 1968, Page 23

RANDOM REMINDER

MAN AND MOUSE

One of the few fields in which man is still permitted to feel superiority of women is in the handling of the mouse. Women, according to the cartoonist and the comedian, will, on seeing a mouse, leap shrieking on to a table as if she is being attacked by a brontosaurus. The cartoonist, moreover, is fond of having the lady in distress drag her skirts almost as high as modem fashion demands. But a man will take no notice, or beat the poor little thing over the head with a shovel. That is, some men will behave in this way. There are a few craven creatures who share a woman’s dislike. One of them had an unnerving experience quite

recently. He is a large, robust man, who wins his daily bread with large, robust manual activities. Because of his vocation, he has the habit of tucking his trouser cuffs into his socks. One morning he went to his garage to drive to work, entered his car and noticed that a packet of sweets he had left in the glove-box had been attacked savagely by sharp little teeth. Not those of his children. With a shudder of disgust, he threw the packet out of the window. Driving along the Main North Road, with revulsion of mice still heavy upon him, he felt a queer and disturbing movement in the region of his lower right leg. Deep frozen with horror, he put the car out

of gear and coasted to a halt in front of his place of employment where—to coin a phrase—it so happened that a group of his work-mates was assembled. He withdrew himself from the car with considerable caution, keeping his right leg as stiff as if it was in plaster. He must have looked quite elegant: “making a leg” is a phrase from Hanoverian days, but it meets this particular bill. To the great edification of his colleagues, he slowly and with every evidence of horror slowly pulled. his sock from the trouser leg. And thereupon there alighted from the region of his ankle his garage keys; a hole in one pocket had given him five agonising minutes.