Random reminder

Press, 14 August 1980, Page 22

Random reminder

DOWN MEMORY LANE

Winter has New Zealand firmly gripped in its icy talons, but we take comfort from the fact that we have to bear with its discomfort for a comparatively short period. Not so for our Northern Hemisphere cousins who tell us that the cold of their winters seems to go on indefinitely. They revel in the fact that “out here” they have only to don their woollies and Wellingtons for a'couple of months, give or take a 'week or .two, while fogs-.and smogs are almost unknown. :

An English doctor now practising in a small South Island town, recalls the bitterness of Scottish winters as he battled his way through the glens in his open tourer of -the Dr Findlay vintage, to tend his patients. Then the low roads of the. Highlands and the high? roads of the - ' Lochs seemed forever covered with, snow, frost, ice and thick inpenetrable mists. One particular area of his round was steeped in the legends of dark deeds done in the Bonnie Prince’s era. For some reason this was on : his mind one night as he drove through it- on the way home from.' a call to the far side of the Loch. Progress was slow, visibility nil, due to yet another clinging yellow fog which completely enveloped the car and driver. As he crept along at the proverbial snail’s pace, the doctor peered in vain around the corner of the windscreen to see where

he was going. Suddenly, without warning, the car stopped dead. He pressed the accelerator, the engine rewed but the car refused to budge. The doctor decided to get out and investigate: ■ The door would not open, the handle moved but the door; was fast. More : than the fog was choking his chest as he slid across to the other side and tried that door. The handle moved helplessly, but again the door would not open. The eeriness of the- situation was starting to eat into the good doctor’s soul. He couldn’t sit there-and'; wait for the'Highland ghosts to carry, him off. He sWung a leg over the side, and as he fell back into the car, he | felt as if he had thrust himself , against an impenetrable wall.-He had. ’ Far down the glen the soft winds moved and stirred the. blanket of fog into a long slow roll. It rolled over the? doctor in his plight, and he saw that., the car was firmly wedged between-a lamp post on. the' one side, and a; smooth stone wall on the other.. Immqvably wedged, fitting as neatly as if the space had been measured for iL He took his bag, climbed out on the lamp post side, and made his way home on foot, a shaken man. New Zealand winters? The good doctor takes them in his stride and a heated Rover now, but remembers his Scottish apprenticeship with- a touch lof nostalgia now and then.