RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31840, 19 November 1968, Page 22

RANDOM REMINDER

MAJOR OPERATION

Journalists, by and large, are not noted for their ability to hew wood and draw water although there are a few who might claim that making mountains from molehills comes easily. But journalists are no less susceptible to feminine charms than other folk, and a good many of them succumb, and marry. Once married, they are prey to all the demands common to husbands: and one young reporter, yielding ground steadily year by year, recently agreed to his wife’s plea for a white picket front fence. For a man whose sole contribution in the field of applied mechanics had been the mending of a bicycle tyre, the erection of the fence promised a task little less arduous than the building of one of the lesser pyramids. But he had the money for the material, he had a cabinet - making friend

willing to assist, and so the work was put in hand. Remarkably, it was completed. It looked very well; but he discovered that the fence line was 10 inches beyond the legal boundary of his property, and he was warned by the local authority that if he did not remove it and if repairs to such items as a water toby became necessary, its demolition could be ordered, and the whole business could be very expensive. By now a great, fierce pride had gripped the master builder, and he determined that nothing was going to stop his Tittle wife enjoying the thrill of having a picket fence. She is anything but an Amazon: but at dead of night she was there to help him remove the fence, section by section, and carry it to the back of the property. Why this particular operation was necessary, it is not clear, unless he

thought the fence might be stolen by some art collector. When reassembling it, ready for attaching it to the relocated fence posts, he was without a punch to drive home the nails, and had to use a bolt. It took longer titan it should have done, and it was noisier, partly through the regularity with which the bolt slipped off nails and the hammer thudded into the woodwork or on to tender flesh. At 11 p.m. a neighbour, basso profundo, advised him to knock it off, and he did. He is now obsessed. He doesn’t care if the council orders him to move it again; the fence is going to be shifted, if necessary, but it is going to go up. We wish him well; beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and if he feels he has a sort of suburban Arc de Triomphe flanking his property, his zeal and energy make it understandable.