RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31728, 11 July 1968, Page 22

RANDOM REMINDER

HEADS AND TALES

“What will the neighbours think?” is the question that regulates many lives <in suburbia, but one young couple believes that a man in their block of flats has been overlooking that golden rule. They are completely scandalised by his behaviour. Every week-* day morning they see him waving goodbye to his wife, who dutifully trots off to a hard day’s work. And does he pack and follow? Not on your nelly. His idea of a good day’s work is to go back to bed, get up again at midday, then loaf around on the divan listening to soothing music. The outraged neighbours watch his wife stumbling home exhausted, and listen while she clatters saucepans to produce his even-

ing meal. Then what does the unfeeling devil do? He goes out, that’s what, all dressed up in his best bib and tucker, obviously ready for a good night on the town. Sometimes they hear him returning from the fleshpots of Christchurch; sometimes they are asleep before he gets home. Worse follows. At the week-end even such a monster as this could be expected to concede to propriety by taking his wife out to dinner or even the front stalls at the suburban cinema. But no, the fiend is seen with a strange woman—not his little blonde breadwinner, but some other beauty with long raven hair. ’ , - : To the neighbour's astonishment and horror, he even brings her home, blatantly flaunting her be-

fore their affronted eyes and, apparently, brazenly inflicting her company on his wife. Unable to stand much more of it, they have looked up Robbie Burns’s poem “To a Louse” and are planning to slip this quotation under their neighbour's door:— “Oh wad some power the gif tie gie us To see oursels as others see us! It wad frae mony a blun- _ der free us And foolish notion." The louse will probably be a bit puzzled, and before he goes off to his night job will ask his wife if she can make head or tail of it. And she will no doubt ponder it as she lovingly combs the long black wig recently sent to her from “Uncle" in Hong Kong.