Random reminder

Press, 5 March 1987, Page 24

Random reminder

Aroha, Betty, Carol. Delilah, Elizabeth, and Fran, six selfstyled “housewyffs” from the Christchurch City suburb of Waimairi, agree that while the dole or the Old Age Pension is okay, paying surtax is even better. So they put the kettle on and had a wee think about what they would do, given the chance, to get into the big money.

Apart from that, of course, “The Press” being a family newspaper. Arolia will create papier-mache dragons on chicken wire. Golden-scaled and crimson-tongued, holding useful pots in their talons, they will grace the most upmarket of markets. Aroha will employ one school-leaver to paint the glitter and another to manage the glue-pot. Betty, too,, likes papier-mache, more down io earth than dragons. Every second shop sells free-range eggs. In paper — crunch! — in paper bags. Betty’s own design of egg tray, short wide re-usable and colourful like she, hand-pressed, sun-dried, will sell by dozens in suburbia. Eventually a supermarket chain, will order by the gross. At that point, Betty will employ a schoolleaver.

Carol will create enormous stuffed toys, predominantly satin fur fabric and silk, in many colours, predominantly black and rose, with fillings firm yet yielding, strong and thrusting, virile,

assertive, yet somehow demure. Carol will become very very rich, the others agreed, and will not be allowed to employ anyone under 16. Delilah will collect cardboard boxes, not grocery flimsies but hi-fi and home appliance boxes with strong sophisticated packing. With knife, tape and enamel, Delilah and her school-leaver employees will create furniture for kids that is strong enough to stand on, and playhouses that will stand a season in the sun.

Elizabeth, who has a band-saw in the garage, will make the castored trolleys to which will stick by Velcro the fantasy vehicles, stagecoach, rocket, submarine — from Delilahs cardboard workshop. Elizabeth’s school-leaver will drive and drive and drive. Fran will do the books and send the bills and bank the cheques. Computers have their uses. Fran will also start a new magazine. Knee deep in letter-box stuffery, she plans the weekly delivery to 100,000 back doors of a useful plastic bag, with hook, containing just those messages which advertisers prefer not to have rain-sodden, wind-blown or chewed by dogs. “A three-cent delivery is a careless delivery,” says Fran. ‘My contractors will be slower in preparing, and slower in travelling, but they will earn 10 times as much.”

And even if the plastic bag goes straight into File 13 unopened, at least the streets will tge tidier. 1