RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31880, 7 January 1969, Page 16

RANDOM REMINDER

FLOOR SHOW

It must be most interesting to watch the progress of construction of a building across the road, but it must be very seldom indeed that established residents are entertained to a floor show even before the walls of the new building have gone up. This new building, in one of the more desirable suburbs is, when completed, to become an ownership flat. But at this stage of development, it is little more than a skeleton. And there’ll be one of those in the cupboard of the new residents, when they take possession, unless this brief note helps allay suspicions about them.

Across the road, seated at her dining table, and accompanied by two small daughters, sat a lady who

must have been positively enraptured at what she saw occurring in the halfbuilt flat. She could see a young lady arrive, with another lady obviously her mother, and it was clear that they were taking a normal and inevitable interest in something they will soon own. But then the funny business began. The lady and her daughter in the half-built flat suddenly began to dance. This was clearly no mad spring gambol of exuberance, to express pleasure at the prospect of owning the flat. They did not run hither and thither. with flowers clenched in their teeth, and leap madly about. No. It was a slow and stately performance, the partners circling each other, perfectly in time and keeping

exactly the same distance apart, as if held together by some invisible cord. It held a hint of the gavotte, an old-world charm quite entrancing. All too soon, for the observer across the road, it ended, the dancers taking a last look around and disappearing into the summer evening.

Of course it was not a dance recital, nor were the performers a couple of eccentrics. The invisible cord was in fact a fourfoot dressmaker’s tape measure; or rather a fourfoot measure as used by a dressmaker. And all they were trying to do was to establish whether the dining room of the flat would be large enough to hold their newest and proudest possession, a large and handsome dining room suite.