Random reminder

Press, 25 August 1983, Page 30

Random reminder

IN FRAGRANTE DELICTO At a garage sale — that is, a sale held by the local petrol station — the family had c acquired items of mind-numbing uselessness. Dried up felt-tip pens. An adjustable wrench to fit any nut between 19 and 21 mm. Wall brackets for unknown sizes of aerosol. Taiwanese spanners which were neither Imperial nor standard metric, nor parallel-faced. A thingmy. Two wotsits. And half a dozen “Freshballs.” A “Freshball” (to quote the leaflet) relieves “discomfort, distraction, and lack of concentration due to traffic fumes, unpleasant odours, pets, tobacco, or stale perfume.” Where lesser mortals might feel that they had to open a window, or bathe, the happy owners of Freshballs merely “renew their fragrance level” by

pressing button B “for two seconds.” The name Freshbali comes from the shape. Each is a 40mm diameter ball, a polythene replica, correctly coloured and well-detailed, of a soccer ball or a cricket ball or a tennis ball and so forth. It happens that 40mm is near enough to the size of a real golf ball for a puttyweighted Freshball, white and dimpled, to be . . . SPLAT! Pfeugh. The teenagers denied everything. It must have been one of Father’s professional golf-partners acting in fun. Would they — the teenagers — really want a father who was covered in bits of polythene and putty, and about whom there would linger, "for months” if the leaflet spoke truth, a “fresh, attractive fragrance”?