RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32587, 22 April 1971, Page 26

RANDOM REMINDER

ALL SET

Every so often, disasters of major proportions which do not qualify for compensation from any of the state insurance schemes hit the home front, and the devastation left behind takes ages to clean up and leaves indelible scars on the mind of the harassed housewife. Such an instance has been reported to these twitching ears by a countrywoman who had been assigned the task of doing some baking to provide goods for sale at a boy scouts’ fund-raising stall. Her husband suggested that sweets would be easier for her than anything else and she duly accepted that proposition. Out came the sugar and butter, in went the water into a pot, on went the element, over it the pot. About then, the tele-

phone went. She answered it. Her son, the one being honoured .by all this activity, came in, saw the boiling wgter, tossed in the sugar and butter and, glowing with the selfrighteousness of one who has done his bit, went away about his lawful occasions. But mother, bless her, had a rather long telephone conversation an exercise to which mothers are addicted. The mess was indescribable. But it must be said that she was guilty of a tactical error in her attempts to meet this emergency. She was far too conscious of the amount of toffee gurgling and hissing and smelling abominably on the redhot element to see the danger of knocking the hot pot from the stove, which she did with some alacrity.

While she was fighting this lesser evil,, the pot descended, with a spectacular spurt of molten muck, on to a begonia plant, which then joined it in a swift and successful attack on the television set, put in the kitchen in preparation for the programmes for the little ones. The stove was not improved one bit. The begonia plant was a dead loss. And the television set, assaulted by a stream of toffee, gave an apologetic cough and stopped producing anything but a faint smell of butterballs. It was a pity the television set expired in that fashion. For who knows? The next item might well have been instructions to housewives on how to clean hot toffee from television sets.