RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32612, 21 May 1971, Page 17

RANDOM REMINDER

TO EACH, HER OWN . . .

There are distinct differences in tastes between those who live in the country and the city dwellers and this is reflected in a good many ways. And there are further differences between those in, say, Canterbury, and those who come from the deep south of the South Island. There is the Gore burr, for instance and , the ability to laugh at 20 degrees of frost, and cribs instead of holiday houses or baches ... and so it goes on. There was a startling revelation into these varying outlooks in a Christchurch house recently.

It was lunch time, and the family was grouped about the table. With them, as a guest, was a young lady from Wallacetown, a hamlet some nine miles from Invercargill, and one which, if memory serves, used to have a special significance at one time for thirsty travellers. The lunch was pleasant, the conversation was light, and all went well until the family cat intruded. It was not so much the cat which caused consternation as the company it was keeping. For it brought to the dining room a captive mouse. This was distinctly upsetting for all present, and

when the cat let the mouse go, and in the cruel way of cats, began to chase it about the room, there was chaos. Eventually some stoic member of the family intervened. The mouse was caught and released, the cat kept inside. But still the girl from the south was in a distressing state. And she stayed that way, until the hosts realised what was upsetting her was not the near demise of the mouse, but the presence of the cat. They made her feel and behave, much as women are ‘expected to do—when they sea a mouse.