RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30978, 7 February 1966, Page 24

RANDOM REMINDER

ALONE AND PALELY LOITERING

The schools are all back again now, and if there is a ceriain amount of chaos in sorting out hundreds of unsavoury children into reasonably orderly groups, streams, classes and kinds, at least on the home front order has been restored. The wives and mothers, bless them all, are back at the helm. There is untold suffering in January, when hundreds, perhaps thousands of men have to work on while their families are away on holiday. Most of them set out on their period of solitary confine- ... <

ments cheerfully, optimistically; it will,they say, be a cinch. Some may even regard the break from domestic routine as a welcome diversion. But by the end of January, they are .practically all on their knees. Baching is highly overrated. It is not the obvious business of cooking. Messing about in a kitchen has its points. It’s the mess about the kitchen afterwards which palls; and the strange, still warmth of a house closed all day; and not knowing where anything is; and remembering

to feed the dog and put out the rubbish tins; and ironing shirts badly; and forgetting to keep the tradesmen fully informed about household needs. And that’s not all. Women are wonderful. They can move in a moment from the laundry to applied psychology and make a cup of tea on the way. They have the memories of computers, the constitution of Clydesdales, with the fragility of flowers. After a week or two on his own, a man begins to think Aladdin never had It so good.