RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31111, 14 July 1966, Page 26

RANDOM REMINDER

MARVELLOUS MEMORY MEN

For about 30 years now, the housewives of New Zealand have had Friday converted into a commando training exercise in return for the privilege of having their lives brightened by a 40-hour working week. There is now a firmly established ritual about Friday, the day set aside for humping home loads of meat and groceries, for the enormous task of preparing for the family being home for two whole days. Year after year, women stand patiently in queues in butchers’ shops, jostle their trolleys like drivers at Addington getting their goods from the supermarkets. Now and then.

one of them is able to free herself from the treadmill and make arrangements which give her a little Friday freedom. This one made out her order for the weekend meat carefully and neatly on a piece of paper and left It with her butcher, poor barrassed soul he was. She said she might not be back before the shop shut but would he leave the parcel with the bootmaker next door. He said he would. When she reached home that night, having picked up her purchases, she found that the contents did not tally with her list, although there were distinct resemblances. She asked for sausages, and got chippolatas; the porter-

house steak was topside. Her mother rang to unravel the mystery. She had also been in the butcher’s shop. He bad told her that the written order had been left on the counter and another customer had sat her small child beside it. The youngster, surrounded by food, had eaten the paper. So the man had to remember what it was, as best he could. He had made one addition—a huge roast she had not ordered. And he had done it to cover all other contingencies; with a roast, he felt, they could not possibly go short for the weekend. They didn't. Because this was the weekend the children were all away.