The Outfit I will Never wear again!
Well, I never got a look in with the 'Elle' print competition. They received over a thousand entries and mine didn't reach the top six but I'm chuffed for those who did as they had a lot of stiff competition.
Anyway, rather than leave the article languishing in obscurity, I decided I'd give it an airing on here. So, here's a little piece entitled 'The Outfit I will Never wear again!'
Sometimes clothes aren’t just clothes. Take my charcoal grey ‘Bermudas’. Please! …Some one! …Take them!
The shorts were a bargain in ‘C & A’ when I was sixteen and fashion ran to rummaging the Kids Department. They winked at me at twelve pounds but when pocket money ran to a pound for me then a pound in the bank, the price was staggering. Until, that is, the style gods smiled on me and reduced them to…
Wait for it…
Four pounds!
Sold, to the chubby, blonde girl shoving loose change at the cashier before the Sales Department change their pricing gun and inflation goes up.
And boy, did I feel swish in my pressed charcoal grey shorts with the black fleck that made me look thin – okay – thinner, than usual.
The label read ‘ Height 164cm’ and at a tiny 5’2 and a smidge, (never forget the smidge), they came to my knee with a smart little turn-up to boot. They had a zip fasten with a button that pulled over my Size 10 waist at the top and were great dressed up, or down and as Mum said ‘washed like a ribbon’.
In fact, I picture a boater with ‘Venizia’ emblazoned on the ribbon as I wore them for a trip to Venice with a red and white shirt and matching hat. The photo is in the album, not that I’ll forget the trip, or the shorts. The locals asked if I was English and when I shook my head offered me drinks as Scotland had scored in the football. Go figure!
Years later, they made a come back with a fuchsia pink bolero and a black shirt as I started at University. Comfy for lectures but tidy enough to say, professional and ‘Happy to sit on the grass without flashing my knickers’.
They went on holiday to Spain; turned up in Tossa, aired in Asturias and sashayed in San Sebastian as at twenty I learned to listen as a language assistant.
They should have been on the Ulmer scale as they met celebs at ‘Ritzy’ and travelled to the States and ‘Disneyworld’.
At twenty-eight I married. I moved to the Middle East and guess what came too?
They visited the golf course in Doha, helping me drive without hitting a frog and to look sensible and professional in my temp job for an oil company.
Next was Dubai. Our first wedding anniversary when we went to that hotel in Jebel Ali for the weekend and the massive breakfast. Where the old ‘Bermudas’ became that wee bit tight and the guy came knocking with the cake as I’m begging my husband to ‘Undo the button and just get them off!’ He must have thought I was up to more than lying full of sausages and massaging my own girth.
At thirty-one I was pregnant and hard pushed to fasten them. With my boy, either the girth went, or they did. I’ve got the memories.
I miss the shorts!
