Random reminder

Press, 28 August 1984, Page 37

Random reminder

RECYCLIST She announced to her family that she was determined to be thinner. Since she had spent years saying that models in magazines looked like starving refugees, they wondered what had made her change her mind. Money, she said. The point had been reached beyind which her waistbands couldn’t be let out, and she refused, she said, to buy a whole new wardrobe. Her loved ones were silent Waistlines might be joked about, but Money? Never. Less cackle, more do, she often says, and in that spirit approached her goal of comparative thinness. Calories were counted, and scales unearthed from a cupboard. Her family sighed, and told each other that at least they liked grilled fish. A week went by, and she announced that she had lost three pounds. (None of that metric rubbish, thank you.) Her family were suitably impressed, and mentioned willpower and self-discipline. She just smiled mysteriously. Her secret might have remained one if contrary traffic lights and a head wind hadn’t made her late one day. Head down, tail up, pulse hammering and perspiration pouring down her brow, she sailed down the drive on her son’s

discarded five-speed, and almost gave her husband an apoplexy. Exercise, she said rather breathlessly, was the best way to lose weight she’d heard it on the radio. Words like “Undignified,” and “Dangerous,” trembled on his lips, but he had the sense to restrain them.

The next day she found the bag of stock food in the middle of the road. She parked her bike and dragged it out of the traffic, and was about to ride on, her good deed done, when she paused. Would her hens eat it? They, would! She werestled it on to the back of her bike and wheeled it home. Soon after she acquired a wire milk bottle carrier: a motorist threw it at her when she was slow to get through an intersection, and only days later her now ever-alert eyes spied a bag of polystyrene, just what she needed to top up the footstools. A whole new way of life opened up before her. “I’ve heard of recycling things,” one of the kids muttered, “but I never really understood what it meant until now.” And yes, she’s still loosing weight, but as the kids say, it’s only a matter of time until a box of chocolates falls off the back of a truck . . .