Random reminder

Press, 19 November 1982, Page 31

Random reminder

HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL There is everything to admire in anyone who can remain an optimist in these present troubled times, but there should be a limit on everything. This column awards the 1982 prize for hopefulness to the Canterbury farmer who had been away from home for a while, with his wife. When they got inside the house, they found a visitor — an opossum. The farmer, although quite agile, could not catch it; perhaps he did not wish to. He took the precaution of telephoning his insurance company, explaining that he proposed to shoot the animal, and would they cover him for the damage inevitably to follow? They would. So he shot the opossum. Sadly, it has to be reported, the gruesome details that is, that there was quite a mess, on his carpet, and a section of the wallpaper.

Uur farmer, a believer in the advertised properties of both his carpet and his wallpaper, sloshed a generous amount of cleansing water over both. So generous was he, in fact, that he felt it necessary to remove the carpet. He took up all the tacks, Tumped the lot outside and put it on a clothes line to dry.

It was unfortunate that a strong wind blew that evening, and even more unfortunate that the clothes line was attached to a brick wall.-It was a heavy carpet.

The line came down. So did the brick wall.

Now our cock-eyed optimist is asking the insurance firm whether it will meet all his costs.