I talked to a gentleman who once worked in Emmaville, in the north of New South Wales. Having briefly visited it, in 1974, I quipped that to visit that particular town was like going back twenty years in time. Without so much as a hint of a smile he retorted, “More like seventy years!”
An easygoing, happy gent, who had not had a holiday in seven years, laid our carpet for us. He was called upon to lay it hurriedly in the second bedroom because dusk was approaching rapidly and we had discovered that the light bulb was inoperative. The carpet is “short” near the door to the bathroom and, next week, he is going to obtain a special metal strip and cover the gap.
He told us of how his knee “blew up” as a result of him constantly hitting the stretcher. His doctor stuck a needle into it and since then he had experienced no further problems.
One carpet-layer, he had heard of, had filed the metal studs on a pair of football boots until each one possessed an extremely fine point, whereby he could move about the room stretching the carpet by kicking at it. This supposedly minimised the need to knee the stretcher, but, as our layer added, “It wouldn’t do the carpet much good!”
This evening we remained watching Channel Seven. The British comedies, “Doctor At Sea” (featuring Robin Nedwell, Geoffrey Davies and Ernest Clark) and “Mother Makes Three” (Wendy Craig), followed “Willesee”, and from half past eight, the film, “Fitzwilly”, from 1967, stars Dick “The Dick Van Dyke Show” Van Dyke and Barbara “Get Smart” Feldon.