Random reminder

Press, 3 August 1981, Page 23

Random reminder

THEIRS NOT TO REASON WHY

It caught her last week, the first intimation that she should have one. More was to come, on TV, on radio, and in newspapers. She heard that queues were forming to get one, staff working overtime and still unable to keep pace with the demands of those hoping to get one. Do it, it said, today. It was urgent, right and proper that you and I have one. The implied threat that if we didn’t we would one day find ourselves without one, and needing one in the desperate circumstance of then not being able to get one. On Friday, with fowls, mash and miserable weather on her mind she was again attacked and told that here was the place to do it. Right here in this Mall! Get yours done here! Get it today! There being no escape from this menace she was maddened by it and her

Own unanswered question of “Why?” Surely, she had missed out on the one vital piece of information? Or was it indeed that she was singularly stupid? Carefully, she told herself that no, if she didn’t want one, then she didn’t need to have one. But, by now she wasn’t so sure that she ought not to have one. The issue, having driven her to bed, reached a peak as her nearest and dearest began to speak of getting one adding that his friends either had theirs or were getting theirs. The whole world, it seemed, except her, had excellent and varied reasons or none at all for having one. And so, she was alone in her entreaty, why must she have one? Why, when she had no intention or valid reason for travel to Australia or elsewhere for that matter, why should she have a passport?