RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33887, 5 July 1975, Page 21

RANDOM REMINDER

CALL TO ARMS

The Australians have been playing England at cricket again, and no doubt those all-night broadcasts again wreaked more havoc in family life than daylight saving. There is a lady in North Canterbury who was not listening. She is interested in babies more than cricket, and while she was listening to a talk-back show about the pros and cons of fathers being present at the birth of their children, the broadcast was interrupted for a commentary on a cricket game between New Zealand and England. That was bad, for her: but it revived old memories. . . Her husband was a product of Lincoln College. and in his eightmonth intensive course

he discovered that the gestation period for cows was nine months and 10 days, as it is for humans. It was a useful item of knowledge, but it did not overlap his very keep interest in cricket. His new young wife became pregnant. He remembered about the cows, counted furiously on his fingers and worked out the date of birth. It happened to coincide with a visit of a New Zealand cricket team to England, and that made necessary an alarm clock and a transistor radio, tucked beneath his pillow. He was thus engaged very early one morning, when his wife said her pains had begun. Whether these symptoms were the responsibility of the shrill of the alarm, or the vio-

lence of a New Zealand batting collapse then taking place, can not be stated for certain. He told her not to worry, as there were still 10 days to go. He thought it must be something she had eaten; but in a burst of indulgence he said he would ring the doctor at the close of play. He never did hear the rest of that broadcast. And nature offered him a proper rebuke. The baby was a girl A boy, of course, would have had the courtesty to wait until stumps had been drawn. But he did hear the broadcasts of the later tests in that senes Without any need for an alarm clock. The new arrival had a built-in one.