RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33451, 5 February 1974, Page 17

RANDOM REMINDER

ONE SHORT

To give them a new experience, a Christchurch man decided to take his wife and two sons to Auckland by train. The ferry was late reaching Wellington. They hurried to the station, but rhe train hostess assured them that they were on time and so was the train. He said he would go and buy a paper but the hostess said he would get one on the train, which was due to leave shortly. Then he decided to go to the gentlemen’s retiring room. He might not have been on a train for some time but he still remembered the printed rules and regulations that have made compulsory' reading for millions of train travellers. He emerged to mingle with alighting passengers from a unit train. For a moment he thought his train had been moved to another platform, but a glimpse showed it disappearing fast in the direction of Auckland. In the meantime, his wife was blissfully reading the facts and figures supplied by the railways in their free literature. She. did nor notice that her husband had not arrived

until her son mentioned it. She assumed he had got on the train further down and was now chatting. When the guard came to collect the tickets some time later, he hadn’t seen her husband but treated it all as a joke; “her husband had left her.” Not a passenger in the carriage missed a word. After a search they found the tickets in the husband’s jacket, which only reinforced the guard’s opinion that her husband had gone for good. They continued their journey, feeling a little uneasy but thinking, as suggested by the guard, that he was on the other half of the train. The hostess came to collect reservations and money for lunch. Had he paid and reserved or should she? She did when the hostess suggested they could adjust the matter later. At the first stop there was no sign of her missing husband. He had missed the train. A woman with two young children got off and over her shoulder remarked she hoped "she found her husband.” Back in Wellington, he regained his efficiency and went to a branch of his organisation which booked him on a plane to Hamil-

ton. He rang a friend in another branch at Palmerston North, who went to the station and informed his wife of his plans. She and her sons settled down to enjoy their journey. He arrived in Hamilton and was entertained bv another branch friend until train time. Just before he was due to go. the wife of the friend delicately suggested he might like to use their smallest room rather than the one at the station. They arrived at Hamilton station a few minutes before the train was due and he went to check the right platform. A guard informed him the train was running 20 minutes late because the ferry was late and the train left late from Wellington. This was the final straw and a very irate passenger said he knew the ferry was late but the Wellington to Auckland train was definitely not late. If anything, it had left a few minutes early — because he had missed it! There was one small note of joy in this sad traveller’s tale. The railways, sticklers for accuracy, refunded his fare from Wellington to Hamilton.