RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33066, 6 November 1972, Page 24

RANDOM REMINDER

/L Little beep goes n eons why.

LOST WEEK-END

City folk sometimes long for a quiet week-end in the country, away from all the sounds of cars and commerce. The idea sounds fine. The facts show the fallacy. A young man of our acquaintance, noted for his sporting prowess, and experienced in stock and station matters, was invited, with his wife, to spend a week-end with a country friend. They arrived on a Friday evening, were invited to the local for a couple, ate their meal two hours later than the programme demanded, then sat around a fire, chatting amicably. The host, Wee Nick (Wee, because he wasn’t) had had a cattle beast killed for him that day. It had been cut up, packaged in plastic bags, labelled, and left ready for him to pick up from an Ashburton butcher the following morning. “I congratulated him on his foresight,” our friend says. And having discovered the body of beef weighed 5671 b, commented that it was an ideal weight to put in his freezer.

“There was silence. Then an embarrassed smile or two between Wee Nick and his charming wife. It was explained that they did not own a deep freeze.” Here, the trouble began. Saturday, 8.30 a.m.. Wee Nick and friend tried to buy a 15 cubic foot deep freeze in a small country village. Inspection of the few shops available was unrewarding. Wee Nick then thought that an electrician friend might know of a spare one somewhere. That line of inquiry also failed, but he did find a friend who said he could get one wholesale in Ashburton. So the problem of purchase was solved. The business of collection was in hand. But Wee Nick did not own a trailer, and mentioned the name of a friend from whom he could borrow one. But as soon as he mentioned the friend’s name, he remembered he still had that friend’s step-ladder; he had borrowed it several weeks earlier. Wee Nick might be a simple country boy, but he showed a flash of ingenuity here. He asked to borrow the trailer, ostensibly to

return the step-ladder. Second problem solved. On their way to Ashburton, Wee Nick was advised by his friend that he had to think about the faint but real prospect of damage to the trailer, the refrigerating unit, or the beef, or all three, and the friend suggested a small insurance cover would be useful. It took them only a short trip back home and five toll calls to fix that. They lost their way searching for the deep freeze place but eventually succeeded. Packing up was simple. They put the meat into the deep freeze and drove off, ready simply to plug in when they got home. Then Wee Nick further distinguished himself. The wind got up from the south and he assured his guests that when a sou-wester hit as suddenly as that, it never rained, simply blew. The words were hardly out of his mouth before a clap of thunder shook the house and the rain came down in sheets. Hail knocked pine-cones off the trees. Then it snowed.