Random reminder

Press, 6 November 1978, Page 26

Random reminder

The man and his wife were seeing off friends from Christchurch airport. It was a pleasant day, and they went, like many others, up on to the roof to get their full measure of goodbyes. The plane departed and they were wandering along to the stairs when. they heard the plaintive cries of a child, clearly in trouble. A small knot of sympathetic bystanders started forming around the iittle chap who had got himself into the classic catastrophe situation. His head was through the railings. “Incredible,” was one comment they design railings of just the right spacing to trap poor little kids.” There was in fact a fair measure of ill-will being generated against architects, planners, authorities and engineers who showed such lack of foresight. The theoreticians among the audience marvelled at the discrepancy between the gap in the railings and what appeared to be the minimum diameter of the child’s head. The practical ones tried all possible

orientations of the head to find the reverse of the original passage in. All to no avail other than the increasing discomfiture of the victim, whose protestations were steadily increasing in volume. Meanwhile however someone had i been wise enough to send for the local representative of law and order whose helmet was soon seen bobbing through the crowd. He arrived and looked on the scene with complete equanimity, bordering perhaps on unconcern. Instantly,- the child was returned to the arms of the distracted and i embarrassed mother before anyone ! was really aware of what had actually happened. No mechanical jacks; no jaws of life: no fire brigade; no pots of grease. Like the stage magic act, it had been done before their very eyes. And how had our man in blue achieved the miracle? Our perspicacious policeman had just walked the child edgewise through the rails to the same side as his head, which he had left behind on his earlier trip in the other direction.