The latest thing in fashion

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I have never been one for fashion but I do not think the reason for that was anything to do with the following story.
At the age of ten, an age I was easily embarrassed, we went to Fraserburgh on holiday for two weeks and although it was in July the weather was (as usual in Britain) very indifferent so I had little use for the new swimming costume my mum had bought in Ayr at the January sales.
One day though we awoke to a bright sunny morning and at last I was going to get wearing my new trunks. Although they were bought at the sales they were supposed to be the latest thing in fashion being made of wool, tightly woven to preserve ones modesty. They were dark blue with a white belt around the waist, more for decoration than anything else I thought as I slipped them on under cover of a beach towel. Never learning to swim until I was in my late forties I was in no hurry to go into the water and was quite happy playing on the sand with my two sisters, building castles and eating ice- cream until the sun rose a bit higher providing us with more heat.
After we had some sandwiches and a drink of orange I decided to try the water so running over to the edge I waited till the lapping waves swirled round my feet and concluded that it was warm enough to venture further.
My two sisters had decided to join us but as Dorothy was only five my mother stayed with her while Margaret and I edged our way deeper and deeper until I could feel the cold waves splashing at my waist and as each wave hit I would jump to try and avoid the cold hitting my chest but each time I jumped my trunks stayed under the water slipping farther down over my bottom each time. In all my excitement I never noticed that I was exposing my front parts for everyone ahead of me to see and carried on until it got too deep to go any farther. It wasn't until we turned back and reached shallower water that the weight of my trunks became too much
even for the snazzy belt to keep them up and all sodden and saggy they slipped right down to my knees, water pouring out of them as they kept slipping until I realised what was happening.
My face immediately turned red as I look at the throngs of people that were sitting around the sand looking out to sea, some of them laughing at this small boy struggling to keep his trunks around his private parts as he ran for a towel.
Needless to say the trunks were never back on again and if they ever were a fashion item other folk must have experienced the same embarrassment hence the reason you never see woolen bathing costumes now. Its no wonder I never learned to swim until late in life, that was enough to put me off going into the sea for years but but not enough to stop me going on it even though I could not swim and if anyone out there ever wore these fashion items they will be able to relate to my story. You can imagine what would happen if the man in the photo had been wearing woolen trunks.
They were as much use as an ashtray on a motorbike and were domed to failure from the start and I often wonder who thought of the idea in the first place and obviously marketed them without testing them but as they were bought at the sales not too much money was sacrificed for my first and last fashion statement.

teenagers

When I hear of teenagers standing drinking alcohol on street corners, I often wonder why they would want to stand out in all weathers when they could be sitting in the warm somewhere enjoying their selves just the same and then I realise that the comfortable places we used,to hang about in our youth do not exist anymore. When I think back to when I was that age memories of the Italian cafe springs to mind with the gang of girls and boys that I used to run with and listening to the jukebox as we drank our coca colas or eat our dish of ice-cream. There was always the smell of fresh coffee hanging in the air when you walked through the doors and the first sound you would hear would be the latest chart hit blasting out of the jukebox as you approached the counter to order your bottle of ice cold coca cola with a straw sticking out of the neck. "Sita down I bringa over to you" the friendly Italian waitress would say as I looked to see which friends were sitting in the booths on each side of the corridor. I looked around to see which booth had the best looking girls in them before I chose where to sit, then I settled down and watched the waitress drop my bottle of coke into the chiller that sat in the corner. For the first few weeks of observing this act I thought the same bottle she was putting in was the one that came out chilled, and marveled at the machines capabilities until it dawned on me that the reason the cooler was so large was to hold enough bottles to get cold and the bottle she put in was just keeping the same amount in the chiller to cool while waiting for the next person to order one.
We used to chat up the girls and go up to the jukebox and play their choice of record to get in their good books and if we had partnered off would play an appropriate romantic song to enhance our chances of maybe more than a cuddle when the time came to see them home.
We did have an occasional drink at the weekend but the pub was not too far from our cafe and as the pubs shut at ten o'clock we would often go back to the cafe for a coffee as it didn't shut until eleven.
If such places existed now we might find that our teenagers would enjoy them the way we did and come to find the comfort and homeliness the friendly Italian cafe brought to our generation.

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