RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32588, 23 April 1971, Page 17

RANDOM REMINDER

ROMANCE OF TRAVEL

Yesterday we recorded the tale of the toffee on the television set. Today, an even grimmer drama, brought back from the mists of time by a friend who was setting off from Christchurch on her way back to Auckland and who, having booked a seat on the Blue Streak, was inclined to think that she had a fast, comfortable and romantic trip ahead of her. Talk of the train recalled to her the first time she had made this journey by rail. It was during the war years, and she had two babies with her, two rather older children, and she planned to go by steamer express to Wellington, to have breakfast at the railway station and then leave her two smallest charges in the nursery so thoughtfully provided by a kindly Railways Department, while doing some shopping and filling in those long hours before the departure of the old Limited in midafternoon. Everything went according to plan until it came to the nursery bit. Up she went, only to discover that the nursery had been commandeered by the Army. So if she had four children

to contend with, she had no milk, no bottles, nor any of the other bits and pieces which might have helped her fight this bitter battle. She did have a perambulator, however, and they all tripped off to the Botanical Gardens. It was a very hot day, and they enjoyed the cool of the trees. About 2 p.m. she set off for the station. She waited at a tram stop. But the first tram did not stop, nor did the next one, or the next, and it was ultimately explained to her that they could not accept her and her children as passengers because she had a perambulator. It was, she recalls, two or three miles to the station and this she had to walk, at brisk pace because of the lost time, following the tram tracks like some eager Indian scout. At the station, she went to the booking office to confirm her sleeper accommodation was ready—she was certainly ready for it. They were very’ sorry, they said, but her sleeping berth had been commandeered by the Navy. She said, before they could, that she knew there was a war on. And she was having one. The best they could do, as replacement, was four

second-class seats. On to the carriage they trooped. She sat with two babies on one of those familiar seats. The other children occupied the one opposite. For approximately 10 seconds. Because it broke—abruptly, and completely. For a little while, things took a turn for the better. The Navy, a splendid service, gave up its sleeping berth in a generous gesture and she got through the night. Some of you will recall the dreary grey hours on that train, as it neared Auckland. She was busy scrubbing and polishing and preparing her family to meet their relatives when the older boy, aged about two, seized one of his mother’s shoes and threw it out a window. It’s not quite like the half loaf business; one shoe is not much value, even if it is half of the newest and most expensive pair of shoes she had ever bought. And she arrived at Auckland to be welcomed by her admiring family wearing slippers.

But what the Navy can do, the Railways Department can do better. Within about three weeks, they had located her missing shoe, and returned .it to her. Even if there was a war on.