Daily News (Perth, WA : 1882 - 1955), Wednesday 18 February 1948, page 10


PEEPSHOW

By KIRWAN WARD

WHEN you're tot-ting up the scores in the Miss No Hoper 1948 Contest don't overlook the claims of a city typist. Sending out invoices the

other day, she addressed one to "Messrs. What name Hardware" — just like that; no street, no suburb, no anything. Even to her tolerant eye the en-velope looked just the tiniest bit bare so, as an afterthought she stuck a penny stamp, upside down, in the bottom left hand corner. A little bewildered by all this, the P.M.G. boys put their postmark and a slogan about bushfires on the back of the envelope, leaving the stamp (on the other side) uncancelled. But the postman always gets his man, and the let-ter duly arrived at the right spot. At this stage the no-hoper influence crept in again. When Mr. What-name opened the enve-lope, out tumbled some-body else's invoice. * * * DON'T kid yourself that you've won Charities or any portion thereof un-til you've checked your tic-ket. There's a fellow wan-dering around this town right now with a wild look in his eye all be-cause of his failure to observe this simple ro-tine. He's a regular investor in sweeps, and always has a fair selection of tickets on hand. Looking through an old paper he saw re-suits of draw No. 403 and spotted his ticket number. He dashed in to collect, and found his ticket was for lottery 404. Frustrated, but not de-feated, he went home, searched his tickets, and found a number that coin-cided with one in the 404 sweep. He returned in triumph to the pay-out place, presented his tic-ket and got knocked back

again. It was for lottery 403. * * * THE visitor looked at his watch, shouted a few garbled words of farewell, and shot through like a Bondi tram, leaving behind on the hallstand an ancient hat which had protected his head from boyhood to middle-age. A tidy housewife, pick-ing it up with a pair of tongs or something, stow-ed it in that elastic-sided cupboard we all have on the back verandah. It only remained there for a day, because the head of the house want-ed something old and un-spoilable for a fishing hat, and selected it as the ideal wear for North Beach jetty. There the Fremantle Doctor rudely snatched it from his head and tossed it into the Indian Ocean. The victim of this mis-fortune phoned me and asked me to break the news gently, because un-till the time he reads this, the real owner, doesn't know that he'll never see his hat again. * * * EQUINE GIGGLE: A re-port that shook Bel-mont over the weekend was about the horse that "broke its near offside fet-lock and had to be de-stroyed." Anyway, it couldn't have survived for long in that acute state of physical confusion.