RANDOM AT LARGE

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31986, 13 May 1969, Page 25

RANDOM AT LARGE

THE FACE IN THE CROWD

Have you, recently, been given the task of finding, in a crowd of several thousand at a shipping terminal, a friend you have not seen for 20 years? It is an ugly business. Not the friend, of course, but finding him. The friendship has dated back a long way, but has been maintained for a couple of decades almost entirely in an exchange of Christmas greetings cards, on which a few words have been scribbled to indicate the present state of the family roll-call, and similar pieces of information. No posting of photographs, no letters; nothing, in fact, which can be unearthed and studied as a basis for singling him.

out from those vigorously waving thousands on the wharf as the ship edges in. Has he, we thought, put on a lot of weight since we saw him last? Has he lost his hair? Will he be peering up at the ship through heavily - lensed glasses? No doubt he will be speculating in similar fashion about us. And obviously it is not going to be easy to find him. It is obviously not going to be much use in just rolling the eyes about in the fashion of the celebrated Jerry Colona. There has to be method. So we begin at one end of the wharf—the one we can see quite clearly, and take it slowly, passing inspection carefully down the throng. Then, from 20 V yards down the deck, the

same process, pausing now and then to reflect on what ugly men and handsome women the Australian climate breeds. An hour later, we saw him—distinctly thinner oh top, much more drawn than us, wearing glasses, but undoubtedly him. We waved. He waved back. And he called out something. The man next to us on the rail answered: it was his friend, not ours. Then, as Lloyd Bridges was in the habit of saying, usually of sharks or wrongdoers, we saw him. And it was really quite distressing. No addition of weight or loss of hair or glasses, like us: he looked almost exactly as he had 20 years ago. He said later \ that he had had a bit of trouble recognising us.