RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31730, 13 July 1968, Page 19

RANDOM REMINDER

AMITY

There’s nothing like having friends. We all need them—the ones who are always there in a crisis, who can offer sympathy without saying a word, who can understand just how a man is placed In any particular or difficult situation, who are always reliable, and always glad to see you.

It is said that friendships among men are usually on a firmer basis than among women. It may well be true that men like to get away together more than women. But even the best of friendships seem sometimes to be built on shifting sands.

Four men from a Canterbury farming community, all connected with the land, decided that there was a film in Christchurch which they simply had to see. And as the weather

was cold, what more natural than that they should take with them a large flask. Efforts by their wives to fill the flask with cocoa or soup were scornfully rejected. The contents of the flask had put them all in a good frame of mind by the time they settled into their theatre seats.

At the interval one of them went off to seek refreshment for his friends and himself. He bought four enormous, giant, monster, king-size ice creams, all lavishly coated with chocolate. But by the time they had all been assembled, handed over, paid for, and the man had returned to the theatre, the lights were off, the film on. Could he find his seat and his friends? Not a chance. He spent fully, five minutes wandering about.

peering myoptically at members of the audience, before sitting down in a vacant aisle seat. He offered an ice cream to a gentleman in the next seat. The offer was primly declined. He did not enjoy the film or, indeed, see much of it Being a tidy man, he had decided reluctantly that It would be better to eat the ice creams, all four of them, than to throw them on the floor or allow the melting messes to spill out over his best going-to-town suit He was, by the end of the performance, decidedly unwell. And his friends? They made mockery of the term. Because they had all seen him groping about desperately in search of his seat but had decided to let him be. They reckoned he provided better entertainment than the film.