Random reminder

Press, 13 November 1985, Page 41

Random reminder

HISTORIC PLACE

Thinking about it afterwards, she supposed such an object had been left installed on the footpath of the little country town for sentimentality’s sake. Not that she had noticed it as she had carefully parked the car beside it in the one remaining parking place in the main street.

Their holiday down through the central lower part of the South Island had been a delight, but the long drive home up the inland road had seemed never ending and she and her two daughters were indeed glad to stop, stretch their legs and peruse the inviting inner coolness of the shops. One daughter heading for racks of clothes, the other to delve within the delights of a well stocked bookshop. Her purchase completed (also within the cool confines of the bookshop), she returned to

her car. Bending over from the height of the footpath to the car’s lower level, she deposited the heavy parcel within the vehicle and closed the door.

Ah, then it happened. The thing on the footpath behind her was an old hitching post, and stepping backwards towards the unnoticed object, she suddenly felt it between her legs as she began her graceful, unavoidable backward descent over it, to the hard surface of the footpath. Her very full skirt enveloped the post and seemed to rise up in front of her as she reached terra firma. And so there she was, sort of draped round the old hitching post; not hurt, but somewhat bewildered by her incredible position. Unnoticed from either the rack of clothes in one shop, or the rows of books in the other shop — or so they said later.