RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33156, 21 February 1973, Page 20

RANDOM REMINDER

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Whilst the Festive Season is broadly regarded as a time for bonhommie, Bacchanalianism and a businessman's bonanza there are occasions when, for at least some people, it can have its moments for serious self recrimination. And none more so, perhaps, than for a local lass who rather rues the mid-December evening she gave over her spare moments preparing for postage a stack of Christmas greeting cards carrying the usual quota of cheer and good will.

An unredeeming feature of her make-up is a personality trait which no doubt in future she will move heaven and earth to correct: cynicism and innuendo. Tn the North Island she has two kindly-disposed and extremely wealthy irreconcilably alienated elderly maiden aunts, both

of whom had stayed with her in Christchurch on holiday during different months of last year as solo guests.

Their names are Aunt Freda and Aunt Hazel. In her card to Aunt Freda she included a chatty note penning some rather disparaging comment about Aunt Hazel. She said, inter alia, that Aunt H had stayed with her husband and she in July but she found her terribly difficult company. Snored like a Persian cat with adenoid trouble, chided her children unmercifully, ate like a horse and not once gave her purse the fresh air treatment.

Her message to Aunt Hazel was couched in similar vein but was if anything, slightly more cryptic. She wrote to the effect that Aunt Freda had been with them in September last and looked

scrawnier than ever. And characteristically tousled. She deprecated the fact that her close relation would insist on visiting town with them, dressed in the drabbest of frocks, the most archaic millinery, not a vestige of make-iip and hosiery which was well laddered and ventilated. Further, that in a rare moment of benevolence she took the family out to dinner one evening. To a nearby hamburger bar.

Meanwhile the principal character in our narrative is suffering from acute migraine trouble and her sleeping hours are bedevilled with recurring nightmares. She has just recently learned from two unimpeachable — and inimpeachable and indignant sources that two of her Christmas cards were tucked into the wrong envelopes.