GOODBYE MR. CLIPS

Taupo Times, Volume I, Issue 10, 19 March 1952, Page 5

GOODBYE MR. CLIPS

(This is entirely fictional.) The elderly Mr and Mrs Dobring visited the not-young Mr and Mrs Vasher aird, seeing a pair of hedgeclippers on the verandah, mentioned that they must buy some soon. Mr Vasher immediately offered to lend them his clips, adding, "I'm using them at present, but come again sometime. If we are not at home just help yourself." In this small town beside tbe vast lake, people are sociable and generous, always ready to lend, even to shart their possessions. But advanced age often incurs a poor memory. Mr Dobring borowed the hedgeclippers while the owners were away and forgot to return them. A few j weeks later his wife reminded him. ' "Why haven't you returned tbose , cutters?" she scolded. Her husband neatly covered his guilt in replying, "The Vashers owe us a visit." If we keep their hedgeclips here for bait they're more likely to come. Months flew past in the jet-pro-pelled way they do in Taupo. Mrs Vasher often tried to coax her liusband to trim their hedges. This, by tbe way, is called nagging. At last for the sake of peace he strode to the tool-shed, then shouted, "Where the swear-word are our swear-word hedge-clippers ? " "Probablv we've lent them to some one," his wife answered. "Who?" he demanded. "I don/t know." "Neither do I." After a few weeks of searehing and inquiries (the Dobrings were away at the time) the Vashers bought a new pair of hedge-clippers. They are still keen as ever to lend things but now they keep two lists in a. note hook, headed "Things Borrowed? and "Things Lent." This is not due to lost faith in human nature. but because they do not trust their own memory. Recently, when wondering to whom they had lent three favourite novels, they could not remember where they had put the

note-book.-

-T.

P.