RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31828, 5 November 1968, Page 24

RANDOM REMINDER

ENIGMA OF PHENIGAMA

It’s a comfort, sometimes, to live in a country so far removed from all the newest amenities produced for the comfort of mankind, like colour television and American-style freeways and love-ins. And it is to be hoped that it will be a long time before we get phenigama. For those of you who have not been doing your homework, phenigama is a harmless drug; invented by the Russians for overcoming sadness, fear, alarm, fatigue, timidity, irritation am’ “bad mood.” A Leningrad professor,

whose name you couldn’t pronounce if we printed it, says that travelling on

trolleys, in automobiles, buses, trains, aircraft, and the traffic round us all day has a rather strong effect on our ears and psychology. Hence the production of phenigama. We don’t think we should have it If we use phenigama to overcome fatigue, it is going to make a mess of things. Well all have our gardens done weeks ahead of present schedules and the devil, they say, finds work for idle hands. In industry, there would be over-pro-duction, with disastrous results.

And aren’t we all a bit better off for having attacks of irritation? A

phenigama-ridden society would be awful the worker, without his timidity, asking for rises every few weeks, the boss, without his normal irascibility, granting them . . . mounting costs. Without fear, fatigue, irritation, etc., there would be no stomach ulcers, with a telling loss of revenue among doctors and chemists . . .

who would of course have to take phenigama to get over it. Hold-up men would be laughed at by their proposed victims.

A rose must have a thorn, and we don’t really want phenigama. Although it might be just the tiling for our golf. . . .