My sister has been sorting through some boxes belonging to our mother and found this 1962 cutting from the local newspaper, showing the country dance group I belonged to at school. I am in the front row, third girl from the right. I well remember those skirts with the petticoats that we used to stiffen by soaking in a mixture of sugar and water. I am not so hot on remembering the names of all the girls in my class. To think that we are all now drawing our pensions!
Sunday, October 05, 2008
Summer of '62
My sister has been sorting through some boxes belonging to our mother and found this 1962 cutting from the local newspaper, showing the country dance group I belonged to at school. I am in the front row, third girl from the right. I well remember those skirts with the petticoats that we used to stiffen by soaking in a mixture of sugar and water. I am not so hot on remembering the names of all the girls in my class. To think that we are all now drawing our pensions!
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Love that picture! Oh, I remember those skirts - and petticoats! There were all kind of tricks to get the right look, rubber foam petticoats, and petticoats made of some kind of net that was awful to sit on, you needed another plainer petticoat under it, and you could also thread a thin wire through the hem...
ReplyDeleteMargaretha
Yes, Margaretha, we had the sugar-soaked net petticoats. Sitting down in them could cause major embarrassment - too much sugar meant the skirt rose into the air.
ReplyDeleteLoved that post, M.
ReplyDeleteIn the summer of 1961, my friend Maggie and I decided to wear our can-can petticoats under our convent school uniform (blue and white striped cotton dresses). The headmistress was scandalised; we were called into her office, in turn, made to stand in the centre of the room and experience the ultimate humiliation as she wrenched down the offending garments until they sat in crumpled heaps around our ankles. Our mothers were contacted and advised that the friendship should not be encouraged as we were 'a bad influence on each other'. This was the final straw for Maggie, who had spent two years railing against the convent's rules and regulations; that autumn she moved to another school.
But the bond between us was too strong to be so easily broken; forty-seven years later, we are still the best of friends.
How lovely that your school friendship survived, D. I'm afraid I have lost touch with every one of those fellow 15/16 year-olds in my picture. I hope that is because I left the area two years later and not because I was a poor friend!
ReplyDeleteLovely picture, M. I can (just!) join in with this discussion. In the summer of 62 I too was wearing a stiff net petticoat, under a white broiderie anglaise dress. I also had a matching stiff net bonnet and some smart white gloves with embroidered rosebuds. It was my uncle's wedding and I was 2!
ReplyDelete...and those belts! They were SO uncomfortable!! You haven't changed much M. I would have picked you out in the line-up.
ReplyDeleteJ,that sounds lovely. Picture, please!
ReplyDeleteCrinny, thanks for the flattery. My nickname in those days was 'beanpole', all I can say nowadays is 'I wish'.
How sweet! I had purple net petticoat. Sounds hideous, doesn't it.
ReplyDeleteMemories to make us blush, Susie, but didn't we consider ourselves fashionable? I think almost every girl in that picture had defied parental warnings and had her long hair cut off the previous year, then we spent our college years growing it again so that we could look like Joan Baez.
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