RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32764, 15 November 1971, Page 20

RANDOM REMINDER

MISSING LINK

Annual A. and P. Shows are events on the social calendar which attract the interest and attention of thousands of people throughout the land but perhaps, more especially the very young. Providing the event is favoured with fine weather it can prove a most enjoyable experience. It gives town residents an opportunity to mix and mingle with their country cousins and vice versa; to cast an appraising and sometimes an apprehensive eye on the cattle and see at close hand industry’s technological trends and triumphs; and by no means least to once again go on safari down sideshow alley savouring the sights to be seen which follow a familiar but always intriguing pattern. Some of the North Island centres appear to have their Show Day much earlier than others. And there is, to our knowledge, a young Taranaki couple who are more than pleased to reflect on the

fact that theirs is over. They had looked forward tremendously to the event and were exhilarated at the prospect of a temporary departure from normal routine—she to wearing her new crimplene frock (a seif confessed flirt) and he to glancing approvingly at the dainty young things who added interest to the passing parade. Their two boys, aged two and three respectively, were tremendously excited beforehand and straining at the leash. And, on arrival at the show they were wideeyed with the wonder of all they saw. An hour or so later the quartette made their way to the sideshow area. By this time the younger son was becoming sleepy and sunburned as he lolled in his push chair. His mother leaned forward to make him comfortable at the same time as her husband stopped to talk to a business acquaintance.

The older boy, who had been holding the handle of the push-chair grasped the opportunity of throw-

ing off parental shackles and disappeared from view amid the surging crowd. Leaving the baby with a friend, and arranging to rendezvous every > 15 minutes his parents set off, in opposite directions, in frenzied efforts to locate the wandering one. An hour passed without a sighting. The secretary’s office co-operated by relaying a description of the boy to the crowd over the public address system.

The boy was located an hour later and, ironically enough, by his father. He was sitting in the front row of a rather tattylooking but crowded tent gazing rapturously at the gyrations of and at the tattoo marks of a seductively clad harem girl swaying and swinging to the sound of eastern music. He had, it later transpired, been there all the time.

As his mother said, looking a little coldly at her husband, she might have known where to find him.