Saturday, 13 October 2012
Kilts
I wore kilts when I was a child. Did any girl growing up in the 1960s escape them?
Here is a photo of me at a very young age astride Muffin the Mule (don't). As you can see I'm sporting a very fine kilt.
Except that it wasn't - it was a tartan skirt. No pin. Even in those heady days of utter carelessness with children, I was considered Too Young for a kilt pin. It was probably just as well, given the accident rate amongst my peers. In later years, at a birthday party for one of my classmates (I won't name her because that seems intrusive) the birthday girl managed to get a cocktail stick embedded in her foot in a most dramatic way (cue shrieking and pointing from all present). In the spirit of the age, she got the blame for being careless. In a French class once, another to-be-nameless classmate suddenly and dreamily interrupted Miss (oh I suppose I'd better not name her as well. Pity. She had the best name of all the teachers. Then she went and got married and became Mrs Something-much-more-mundane.) Where was I? Oh yes, the interruption was "Oh - it's gone right through". All eyes swivelled to the speaker and widened in horror as we saw that she had managed to push the point of her compasses through her middle finger and out the other side. More shrieking. She was roundly blamed for playing with her Maths equipment in a French lesson. Perhaps she would have got more sympathy if it had been in Maths. Doubtful, considering the treatment awarded me when I put my arm through a pane of glass in a fire door, necessitating 35 stitches. I'm not bitter.
Anyhoo, I had plenty of kilt pins later and I don't remember any accidents.
(Something has happened to Blogger. I don't like it. This post looks odd - sorry I can't work out how to make it behave.)
I got to thinking about kilts following Nell's comment on a previous post. Then, whilst preparing for a Singing for the Brain session this week I came across this. Enjoy! All things truly are connected.
Thanks for popping in.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Strange appearance (of blog post oc) due to lack of paragraphs?
ReplyDeleteYou seriously expect us not to comment on the photo?
*Firmly clenches teeth, bites tongue, clamps lips together and leaves room*
PS Trying to do all of the above leads me to think it's an anatomical impossibility....
DeleteI don't expect you not to comment on photo! Comment away..
DeleteNot just the 60s but the 70s too! I can also remember being very jealous of the girls at one of the local schools where they got to wear really pretty kilts as uniform. Pretty sure they had pins, so I'm sure things were gruesome at times...
ReplyDeleteAlison x
Wow - kilts as school uniforms - that would have been excellent!
DeleteAh - I see why you might think that. The "don't" was referring to Muffin the Mule...
ReplyDeleteDo not be unkind about Muffin. He was my first hero. No later hero has come up to him.
DeleteMy current guests peered at the photo with me and there was a chorus of "I had to have my hair like that..." Well actually not a chorus because one of them didn't. But two of us did....
The kilted kids are still around in Hoddesdon, saw some the other day but can't remember which school it is.
I fear you are too innocent to get my drift. I held Muffin high esteem, can sing his theme tune
DeleteI had a couple of kilty skirts with joined-on vests, over which my mum put a polo necked jumper. Very smart. No pins.
ReplyDeleteMy dear! How stylish AND practical! Want one, although I can't manage a polo neck These Days.
DeleteWho's the bird in the picture?
ReplyDeleteCareless talk costs lives.
DeleteDeprived as I feel, as a half-Scottish child, in never having had a kilt and impoverished as I feel in terms of interesting school accidents (to which dearth I will return)I am hopping, skipping and jumping not to leave Andrea feeling deprived of the appropriately Carry-on-esque response to her Muffin the Mule encounter. So : oo-er miss!
ReplyDeleteAnd so to more ladylike matters (on which note, I'm glad to see Lady L has made a welcome reappearance), but my main musing is on whether we were a particularly physically adept, well-behaved, and/or unadventurous bunch of gels at Loreto? All I can bring to mind is one hockey ball to the head (not mine. It seems pathetic and so I'm racking my brains...but to little avail...)
Drat. I threw that closing parenthesis down in totally the wrong place. I crave your forgiveness.
DeleteEgo te absolvo. And thank you for Muffin (...). Perhaps I acted as a magnet for accidents to happen around me, rather as Pigpen was followed by a cloud of filth. Or perhaps it was the shadow of The Girl in the Coma, for whom we were entreated to pray in assembly. I can't remember the details of why she was in a coma, and wonder whether it was in fact a fantasy woven by the nuns to warn us that Anything Could Happen to Sinful Girls. A "truth" solemnly passed around amongst us was that she was in a coma because she swallowed the cap of a biro, for which she would have been castigated on many levels, not least the sin of using a biro rather than a fountain pen. All very Hilaire Belloc.
DeleteOh, if only you'd all been born later, and so been able to burst into a chorus of "Girlfriend in a Coma" in assembly.
ReplyDeleteNow that is one fine image! I can see the film - a la Pennies From Heaven. glorious.
ReplyDelete