RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32323, 15 June 1970, Page 17

RANDOM REMINDER

BILLETS DOUX?

They seem, in the country areas, to like writing letters to each other whenever they can, and this is not in the course of normal correspondence. A typical example of the rapidity with which rural residents will rush to the writing desk is afforded by the tale of the girl of 17 who was home on holiday recently from her studies of horticulture. One of the first things she noticed was that the farmer next door had cut his gorse fences and the gorse was in neat bales. She found it impossible to resist the temptation to pull his leg so, having first wheezed up the neighbour’s wife, she telephoned and, assuming a gorgeously superior and sophisticated voice, she said she was staying with friends, and while driving past the farm noticed the bales. “I heard this district had suffered from drought, but I didn’t think things were so desperate that you had

to bale gorse for fodder,” she said. He explained the gorse was too small to pick up with a front-end loader and that he found baling it was quite successful. Suppressing a few rude thoughts about the ignorance of the town-dweller, he went on to say that in a day or two he would take it all to the river-bed and bum it. There was then a change of tactics. She said she had heard he had a very successful stud. He started out again, explaining what breeds he had, how he looked after them, all in considerable detail. He was really warming to his subject when his wife thought it was time to call it off and beckoned to him to desist. A peremptory wave of the hand, indicating silence, was the response and on he went. The teenager heard him out, thanked him sweetly and rang off. But you can't trust a woman. The neighbour’s

wife obviously told all, when she stopped laughing, which explains how the young lady, flinging herself in youthful exuberance into her mini-car next morning, landed on a bale of gorse. A little later she was able to read the note which accompanied this handsome gift. It was addressed to “Madam / Senorita” and read: “In answer to your inquiry I can assure you we have developed quite a hunger for our product, and are delighted to know that others show such an interest in it too. We hope that our sample may present that tingling sensation familiar to those in youthful good health. If this hypodermic method of tuning up should happen to prove uncomfortable, rest assured that our Dr Farmer is available, after 9 p.m. daily.” She is only 17. And it is highly unlikely that the matter will rest there very much longer than she did, when she got into that car.