RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31725, 8 July 1968, Page 16

RANDOM REMINDER

LEFT OVERS

Imagination, sometimes confused with memory, can cause strong men to tremble, to persuade almost anyone to abandon the habits of a lifetime. A Christchurch journalist, on his way home one afternoon with his wife, bought some fish, which was kept in the refrigerator overnight Next morning, when abort to use it they discovered that they had made an unhappy purchase. It was rotten. They took it back that morning to the shop, where they conducted somewhat protracted negotiations with the fishmonger. An attempt to cover their unsavoury fish with a heap of new bits, without charge, was declined,

and the man ultimately gave back the shoppers their money. Two days later, the journalist was working at night, when an office colleague arrived bearing a packet of fish and chips. The purchaser extended an invitation to our man to help himself. This was the sort of opportunity our man, over a long and illustrious career in his trade, had hardly ever been known to refuse. But for once, he was all caution, and he discovered, after an inquiry, that the stuff had been bought at the same shop with which he had had his dealing. Almost immediately, he could smell that the fish was bad, and wa half-way towards recognising these

inanimate bits as the very ones he had returned to the shop. The packet was left open, where all and sundry could help themselves and in normal circumstances the lot would have disappeared in less time than it takes a linotype operator to say etaoin. But the word, or the whiff, had got about, and there it all lay, in soggy state. Noone was willing even to touch the stuff.

It was a relief next day to see that it had duly been taken away by the night cleaners. But there was an uneasy thought that perhaps they should have been warned, and that they might have seen this as a gracious, if greasy, gift