Random reminder

Press, 17 June 1980, Page 31

Random reminder

BRIEF ENCOUNTER

This may not be the most savoury of tales — although it does have a food content — but it goes to show something of the strange affinity of twins. These ones were about 40 years of age, each with two children, the youngsters being about eight and nine years of age. Late in the summer, they , were in Christchurch for some shopping on a fine Friday evening. As they were ■taking the pedestrian crossing at Armagh Street, a couple Of youths in what they described as a “beat-up bomb” performed what is known as a “wheelie” right on the crossing. This abrupt U turn, a highly dangerous exercise, succeeding in splitting the group into two. One mother and her children were on one side of the car

as if was forced by other traffic to halt, the other three on the other, side. The car and its occupants hid each • mother from the other. : But they were as one in their instinctive protective reaction, and in , their fury. One -of the women ■ confessed that she had been handling a t parcel of fried fish, and that she had not had a moment to remove grease from her hands. At the moment she yanked a clump of hair from the head of the car passenger her sister on the other side was jamming a large cream freeze into the face of the driver. It could not have been better timed if they had rehearsed for weeks. The startled driver, looking like something from a silent slapstick comedy, took off at high speed, his anguished ■ passenger beside him. Rough justice?