Underwear - Money Well Spent?

     Although I spent an afternoon merrily engaged in shopping for undergarments recently I still don’t buy these items as regularly as I feel is necessary.  Years can go buy before I give the matter more than a thought or two so such purchases are clearly not of great concern and I can easily view them as a frivolous waste of money.   Back when I first started earning my living there was no doubt that I saw pink and peach nylon panties and petticoats a misuse of hard earned finances – particularly since I was likely to be the only one who saw them.   It was to be some time before anyone else was allowed to catch a glimpse of these most provocative and private garments.    Quite apart from that I definitely felt the expense involved could be more usefully diverted to Marks & Spencer’s orlon twin sets in the same colour range that everyone could view and be impressed by.   If I cut the labels out there were even some who might believe they were cashmere.   I was of course still a teenager and definitely a naïve one.  

 

   All those years ago my buying was still much influenced by my mother who, along with a great many other women of her age and ilk seemed altogether too concerned with what people might Think should I be knocked down by a bus and unacceptable undergarments revealed to the Hospital Emergency Department.  Investing in something attractive she felt was money well spent.  Strangely my grandmother, whose own underwear would have been decidedly basic and well worn, seemed to share that very same anxiety.   This paired neurosis caused me to eye buses suspiciously before crossing close to them but did not prompt any great desire for lace edged petticoats with which to astound and electrify the medical staff at Gravesend & North Kent Hospital in Bath Street.  As my possible injuries were treated there would be no sharp intakes of breath and admiring comments on the delicacy of the trim.   Apart from all that it seemed a little anomalous that all the alarm was concentrated on road traffic accidents concerning females.  Nobody was too bothered about the state of male underwear and potential consternation caused by threadbare and inelegant y-fronts.  

 

   Nevertheless the unease pertaining to the possible horror I might generate in the local hospital should I have an altercation with a bus in a moment of inattention meant I did spend a certain amount of time on Saturday afternoons browsing the undie aisles in both M&S and BHS.   On those rare occasions when I succumbed and made a purchase after an exacting hour considering the charms of all, I would most likely yield to the latter retail organisation.   The choice was primarily made on a cost basis because M&S was substantially more expensive than their local rival as we all knew.    I never resorted to the Market which my mother favoured no matter how low the cost involved and how hard she entreated me to.  The thought of the very direct interaction with the seller, possibly male and prone to bold and brazen comments was quite horrifying to me at the age of sixteen and was to remain so for some time.

 

   The market was the destination of choice for most of our family buying and my mother only ventured further from its charms if a solid search did not reveal what she required.  Again her choice was largely based on cost and back in those days markets were still the cheapest option for most local shopping.  Over the intervening years the position appears to have altered with some markets becoming alarmingly pricey the previous batch of cheerful cheeky traders giving way to more beautiful sales persons wearing hand-made shoes and jackets that have an air of Bond Street about them presumably to be more in keeping with the cost of the goods on sale.

 

  Back in the 1940s and 50s market underwear leaned firmly towards what were then still known to some as vests and bloomers, the latter being high wasted and elasticated at the knee pastel coloured in nylon for summer and flannelette for winter.  My mother and aunts were united in the fact that they found them to be more than serviceable and Aunt Mag said she was proud to hang them on the line each Monday morning.   Only Aunt Freda said she wouldn’t be seen dead in them and like me went for a more modern design but then she was known to be Flighty and, not surprisingly, eventually gave birth to a child out of wedlock which everyone said would happen sooner or later considering the way she Carried On.  As a family we were unified in the fact that we were most unlikely to go anywhere near the underwear departments of what we saw as more exclusive stores such as Nottons (heaven forbid) or Bonmarche and in fact these were places we rarely entered.

 

   I have no idea where the underclothing of my early childhood was purchased but my most unpleasant memories of that worn next to the skin revolve around this time.  It was invariably uncomfortable and constricting and never to be forgotten is the horror of the Liberty Bodice which I was forced to wear until I was about ten, a strange unwieldy garment which always seemed to have a great many small rubber buttons that were impossible to handle - in fact I still wonder what their function was.    Later on the Roll On seen essential for some of my teenage years was somewhat similar – thick and ugly with a mind of its own and serving only to restrict normal body movements.  Back then females were strangely accepting of the fact that it was absolutely necessary to wear what was known as a Foundation Garment, armour-like constructions that had replaced the Stays that my mother and aunts wore and apparently were an improvement in that there was no need to lace them.  Some time later with a shudder of relief most females who hit their mid teens at the same time as me firmly discarded all such monstrosities and opted for the more aesthetically pleasing suspender belt preferably in scarlet or black.  I was warned that these new-fangled belts would do nothing to keep me warm in winter and I was certain to end up with pneumonia but of course I was no better at listening to such advice than my peers.  Meanwhile throughout all these adjustments in style males of a similar age and background remained happily in their y-fronts tattered and shabby though they might be.

 

   When pantihose burst upon the scene in 1959 the suspender belt itself rapidly became outmoded which caused some consternation in those who admitted to finding it the most alluring underwear development of their lifetime.  Those of us whose underwear ideology was always going to be firmly adhered to the twentieth century were anxious to let it go and explore more contemporary developments such as bikini style, hipsters, thongs, boy-shorts and g-strings.  I was one of those keen to go forward to some extent whilst viewing with suspicion items with the term Spanx in their description because of the immediate connotations with the liberty bodice.

 

  Sadly my overall progress was destined always to be much the same as it was during the great leap forward of the 1960s when we were all advised to burn our bras which was all very well if you did not need a bra in the first place.   This of course might be the real reason for an enduring lack of will to spend money on anything that has a hint of Undergarment about it.  

A Painful Christmas Past ......

It’s not unusual for parents to be blamed for that which defines and shapes their children’s lives for good or for bad.   Mothers were once at the forefront of this trend but now fathers are beginning to be seen as equally culpable.  My brother became strangely apprehensive each year as Christmas drew closer and as he grew old  he told me that he placed that feeling of foreboding squarely at the feet of our father who had so inconveniently chosen to die on December twelfth all those years ago.  Clearly our mother was unlikely to have recovered sufficiently from the shock of the event to make that or as far as he was concerned, any future Yuletides joyous occasions but common sense dictated that she couldn’t really be held responsible.

I only half agreed with him and in any case once I had children of my own I pulled all the stops out to make each Christmas, antipodean though they were, the happiest and most momentous possible.  It was at times exhausting, particularly during unrelentingly hot and humid summer days and nights but I worked at it with dogged determination in order that each should grow up with a store of happy memories.  And although I complained every year of all the work involved, of course I loved doing it!  

For all these reasons and many more besides I wanted to make Christmas 2019 the best one ever because Himself was totally aware it would be his last; he kept saying so.   I didn’t quite believe it because at that time I was still foolishly hopeful that something, somehow would emerge from the shadows to save him.  But naturally enough, as is invariably the case with terminal illness, that did not happen which I might have realized if I had only stopped to think the situation through and analyse the slim possibility of a last-minute cure.   I’ve never been good at noticing the obvious and my mother often commented observing that there’s none so blind as them that won’t see and looking meaningfully in my direction.  At the time of course I had no idea what she was talking about and in any case I was not the only recipient of this philosophical statement and at one time she said it several times daily.

To get back to around this time last year, it all started well enough.  We three Aucklanders were excited that Sinead was coming to spend the holiday with us because her love for her father has always spilled over joyously and affected each one of us.   We were delighted, excited and I even began to plan menus and wished I had prepared better and that there was time to make a Christmas Pudding that hid tokens, among them, somehow or other by some sorcery a silver threepenny piece.  Time was short though and instead, Sinead brought one with her from Fortnum & Mason.  It didn’t harbour the required coinage but when lit up with brandy did very well indeed for tradition.

The stage was set for a perfect celebration and even when it was suggested that we might in fact have to make room for a last minute totally unexpected guest our enthusiasm could not be wholly dampened.  To my mind it was a scenario most unlikely to eventuate and I based that conclusion on the fact that I had for over a year been attempting to elicit concern and interest in what Himself was going through from the errant family member in question without any success whatsoever, not even as much as a late night text.  Like it or not there lurk among our progeny the occasional one distinctly disinterested in any degree of loving care towards a parent suffering distress.  In the final analysis my thoughts mattered little as befits the position of a mother because Himself has always had a forgiving nature and was overjoyed to welcome he who had seemed lost to him.  My own mother would have nodded approvingly and noted that he was tickled pink and it would do him no end of good!

    I pushed aside the reservations I had nursed as to what might might in effect turn out to be a bad fairy at a christening and it was only later I fervently wished I could have been stronger.  This was because although it appeared that many of our previous parental misdemeanours had been abandoned now on his very Last Christmas, the one that was supposed to be perfect, it was quite unexpectedly revealed that Himself had in fact been a very poor father indeed.   One child had been forced to grow up in an environment of domestic violence and ongoing visits from law enforcement agencies.   That would have been bad enough but not content with that this heartless and neglectful father had exacted upon the unfortunate lad a particularly ritualistic form of sadistic physical punishment.

 There did not seem to be very much that could be said regarding such unanticipated accusations at the time but over the intervening months a lot of reflection and rumination has taken place during those hours when sleep is elusive.   And as Christmas 2020 draws inexorably closer I find that I am all too often lingering a year behind, thoughts whirling about those painful whimsical notions.   If only such fanciful ideas could have been avoided upon the occasion of that important Last Christmas.   They were made even more poignant by the fact that following his death some weeks ago the only photograph to be found in his wallet was that of his accuser, aged five or six half smiling and staring pensively at the camera.  

F i r s t W a k i n g

 

It’s undeniably the hardest time, no question of that, those first befuddled minutes after waking.   Initially always a feeling of normality punctuated only by irritating little question marks queuing up anxiously to unmask the slight unease that begins as just a murmur and rapidly becomes a scream.  That’s how memory works for some of us.  Long ago conversations come to mind - one with the friend from when the children were still young, memories of sitting in Phoebe’s kitchen in her smart new house in Epsom, chosen specifically because it was in the Right School Zone.   She had never spoken of the cot death before but on that day tears coursed down her cheeks unchecked as she described waking up each morning crying and initially wondering what those tears were for, then the unbearable pain of memory.   Back then I could only make what I hoped were the right noises because I had never suffered such a loss and had little understanding of the anguish she described.   Now of course I have a better handle where sorrow is concerned.

 

That time that directly follows waking can become darker than I ever could have imagined and so I make concentrated attempts to navigate a path forward and tell myself that empty aimless hours are entirely of my own making.   I should answer the phone and that is something I am still most unlikely to do unless of course it is someone I really want to speak with and now with ever present Caller ID the favoured few can be whisked to the top shelf of togetherness effortlessly.    Those who deliberately hide their identity are largely ignored even though that is something I do myself from time to time when I can remember the required code.  To be completely honest the landline rings less and less as days go by.  I should abandon it completely and thus save money. 

 

By midday I usually begin to feel a little less despairing and note that it is generally during the mornings when I pace about the place talking to him, berating him for leaving me at a time when I so clearly still needed him.   How could he do that?   And by afternoon I am once more consumed with self-reproach for the wrongs I did him.  Why did I make so much fuss when he piled up cushions around him and never ever returned them to their original positions?    When he ate handfuls of sultanas at midnight and invariably trod half a dozen across the kitchen tiles?   When he held firmly onto the TV remote month after month so that I barely understood its most basic functions?  No need to ask the questions because I know why – that self-absorbed streak of mine has always been there, no doubt about that.   I am at this very moment compiling a list of those things I most regret.  

V e s p e r s

 

Like many children of similar age and ilk to myself I was brought up to say my prayers although overall our household would not have described itself as particularly religious for the times.   It was simply that most of us leaned closer to organized religion in those days and largely we were aware of which spiritual groups our friends and neighbours favoured.    A great many were what we then loosely termed Church of England although my cousin Pat was heard to proclaim on more than one occasion that in fact we were each and every one of us Church of England whether we liked it or not because that’s where we lived and nobody could argue with that.   The fact that our family was firmly Roman Catholic and she and her mother were at least arbitrary Mass attendees made little difference to her logic on this matter.  To be honest Pat was not a particularly cogent thinker.   But to be totally fair to her we were back then a community that felt it necessary to attach itself to more precise views and attitudes than would be deemed necessary today.   For instance we were expected to take definite Sides when it came to events like the Oxford Cambridge Boat Race each Spring and we did so with enthusiasm though none of us had ever witnessed it except glimpses from time to time on Pathe News and had little idea of the complexities of it.  What we did know was that we either supported the Light Blues (Cambridge) or Dark Blues (Oxford) and we stayed that way.  The boys might even organize fights in support of their team.   Considering that none of us were ever likely to have anything to do with either university in retrospect there seems little common sense in all the excitement the race generated.   Little wonder then that our religious affiliations were demonstrated equally ardently.   

 

A scant few of our neighbours resolutely described themselves as Chapel and had aunts and uncles with exotic names like Bronwen and Rhys who spoke with funny accents and were disapproved of for some reason by my mother.   A few were involved in The Salvation Army known as The Sallies where the men learned to play musical instruments to amuse us with carol concerts at Christmastime and were wholeheartedly approved of.   Then there were the Baptists and the Methodists who seemed interchangeable at times each running Sunday Schools to which all local children were welcome.   A mere handful of residents identified themselves as followers of Judaism and none of these lived in the streets around York Road, favouring instead the smarter houses in Robinia Avenue or even those in London Road near the Library.  Well who wouldn’t?    My grandmother said that you could always trust the Jews to fall on their feet and rise to the top like double cream.   I had little idea what she meant by that and she wasn’t the kind of grandparent who went in for undue explanations so I didn’t ask.   But I did begin to realise, as we all did, that because Adolf Hitler and his cronies had hated the Jews with a vengeance and we hated him, we were obliged to support them.   At school Billy Elliot who was known for being what my mother called quick on the uptake, announced that it was the Jews who had killed Jesus and looked around to see what effect this had on us.   We were as one quite silent, exchanging apprehensive glances and Mr Clarke said to get back to reading The Golden Fleece and not to be so inane Billy because nobody could be sure of that and anyway nobody thinks you’re clever.    I did think he was clever but I wondered what inane meant.

 

Followers of Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism were generally absent from the ranks of the Northfleet underclasses at the time and years were to pass before I became aware of any.   There was certainly no local building known as a Temple and in any case that term in itself we only associated with New Testament stories about the life of Jesus which we came across on a regular basis when we lined up for Sunday School.    It would have been unheard of back then for anyone to describe themselves as a Pagan or even realise that Paganism had anything to do with spiritual beliefs.  Few admitted to Atheism or Agnosticism primarily because although such beliefs existed they were not something anyone tended to boast about and perhaps just a bit like harbouring divorce or illegitimacy in the family.   We were completely aware that unpleasant family facts were better ignored than discussed.

 

The principal spiritual camps were decidedly Catholic or Anglican both as familiar as Christopher Robin himself to us at least as far as bedtime prayers were concerned.  The two groups were also proudly different and easily identified by their local schools where large groups of students cheerfully despised each other and created offensive couplets and verses with which to incite local hostility.   We had a vague idea that the school adjacent to Northfleet High Street known as The Board School was not affiliated with either church but were ignorant as to how this idea actually worked and had little will to find out.   My friend Molly, from a less devout family than my own said that in her experience there was bound to be a church of some kind lurking behind the Board School no matter how little importance appeared to be placed upon it.

 

By the time I was three years old I had confidently learned The Lord’s Prayer, later observing that my version differed only minimally from that tripping from the tongues of the Anglican children.   Fast on its heels came a firm grasp upon Hail Mary then Matthew, Mark, Luke & John and Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.    The only one of these verses unfamiliar to my classmates at St Botolph’s was that pertaining to Mary, Mother of God because Protestant schools did not place as much emphasis upon her place in the Holy Family as we Catholics did.

 

As I became a more confident rote learner our household vespers themselves became more protracted.   Praying was not something that I disliked because I assumed that the ritual of kneeling in prayer before sleeping was simply what everyone did.   In those early days my mother supervised to make sure that my interpretation of wording was correct and I can only assume that surprising as it later seemed to me, her own mother had done the same which would have been quite an undertaking with the many children involved.    It was most important to my mother that there were should be no mondegreens.  I think my only one was the ubiquitous ` blessed art thou amongst women’ which for generations of Roman Catholic five and six years olds was so easily distorted into ` blessed are now the monks swimming’.   I nightly conjured up teams of monks all robed and minus hair and seeming intent upon contesting for an Olympic team.     Later my brother was to deftly turn `Jesus makes us fishers of men’ into `Jesus makes us vicious old men’ which he declined to abandon for some years.   The accompanying images in this case were quite menacing.  

 

Old habits die hard and it was years before I completely discarded bedtime prayers although I neglected to kneel on a regular basis once I reached my teens and failed to teach my own children any of the routines that my mother taught me.    The end of day observance itself I conformed to until at least my mid-twenties.   This was most probably because I was in the habit of tacking on to the end of the ritual particular entreaties to God to look after members of my family and of course to take very good care of me!   Even when a growing doubt as to the actual existence of a Christian deity trickled through my thoughts on the matter I was never able to totally desert the idea.   A basic belief in the hereafter coupled with the presence of a genial creator has always seemed like a harmless enough notion to me though I do find myself wondering how many of today’s children are familiar with evening prayers or have any thoughts at all on the idea of a Divine Being.  As for myself I am still hovering on the fence of debate as to the existence of God – though I definitely don’t Not believe!