Random reminder

Press, 25 May 1984, Page 20

Random reminder

TRANSFERRED EPITHETS

A typewriter makes a lot of noise. Several multiply the racket out of all proportion. A whole gaggle make an unbearable din. A poet said “Eye-deep in hell" — not of typewriters — but certainly applicable. Everything* is submerged in the staccato cacophony.

Only one thing can win out against this wall of sound, and that is the portable radio. And at only one time of the yean cricket time. That period of the year when normally sensible human beings crawl the streets from one television supply shop to the next, their minds transfixed. Productivity plummets.

Back in the office. Clearly heard above the mechanical jangle will be the rustyvoiced commentator giving us his view of Mt Olympus: whether Zeus is an outswinger or Sir Fred Perseus a good all-

rounder. Outnumbered, the typewriters fall silent The glazed faces of tlpse still at work display confused emotion. They sit there, a dictaphone in one hand, a radio clenched in the other. As did one poor lad. Dictating some (no doubt) truly consequential communication, he was arrested mid-sentence by the call of the ether. He pressed the radio to his ear, his expression deepening, head nodding vicarious agreement — yes! yes! The episode faded. Eyes still hazy, he lowered his radio and thumbed the on/off switch. He started talking into it. It continued to talk back to him. The fact that he was dictating into the wrong device seemed to escape him. Reality took the form of someone’s giggle. It quickly brought him back to the present tense, j