RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32564, 25 March 1971, Page 16

RANDOM REMINDER

Tw0...? well three's r crowd anyway.

OVERSIGHT

We had a telephone call at work the other day, from a young lady with a most attractive voice, and unfortunately we forgot to ask her her name and address. A dreadful oversight. But we might as well record what she had to say. It was soon after breakfast time, a day or two before, she said, and her little ones had toddled off to school, tvhen she had a caller. Two callers, in fact. Because they were the representatives of a religious sect which invariably visits houses in pairs, and whose field workers quite often have a habit of

out-staying their welcome. But she was not aware that there were callers, when this drama was revealed. And that was not all. They had apparently knocked on the front door, she said, but she had not heard them because she had her vacuum cleaner at work. But she did notice that the children had apparently forgotten to latch the door, as she had asked them to do. And she went to close it just as her callers, not having had an answer to the first knock, pushed the open door wider and asked if there was anyone home.

They very soon discovered that there was. And they did not out-stay their welcome. They fled at high speed, and looked likely, at last sighting, to hurdle the fence instead of waiting to open the gate. But why, we asked in our naive way, did they leave in such a hurry? "Oh yes,” she said. “It was a very hot morning, and in the really warm weather I like to do my housework in the nude.” And we forgot to ask the name and address, one of the first checking of information systems a journalist is taught.