These slippers are virtually my favourite present. I am not sure whether this is pathetic or not; I am 37 and a lady which means I am, in theory, still in the market for small (or large, and possibly diamond-studded) trinkets and flagons of scent; pink and black boxes containing saucy pants* and extraordinary corsetry**; fur coats and holidays in hot places; hardback novels and collections of poetry.
Instead, I am very happy in my brushed cotton red pyjamas, reading Winter Holiday by Arthur Ransome and eating Christmas cake (low on the weird green stuff and cheap red cherries; high on booze and nuts) in front of the fire, twiddling my feet in their new slippers and pulling faces at the dogs.
I am also considering joining the Arthur Ransome Society, if only because one of their main aims is to "encourage children and others to engage, with due regard to safety, in adventurous pursuits". I approve of that sort of thing. When I was little, children in books rowed across lakes, went camping, hid in caves, rustled ponies, dived off cliffs, ate porridge for breakfast, wore woolly hats and mittens in the winter and shorts and Aertex shirts in the summer and went out ALL DAY, only coming home for lunch, tea and supper if someone hadn't wrapped it up for them already in greaseproof paper. Nowadays children in books are either on national entertainment programmes tapdancing, or dressing up as Daniel Radcliffe.
Children in the olden-days books would have been happy with a pair of red suede slippers for Christmas, unlike nowadays children. As far as I can see, every child over the age of three got a new mobile phone and 80GB iPod for Christmas this year. But this is not very adventurous! I shall put on my slippers and, wearing them, embark on an entire range of Adventuous Pursuits, pausing only to wrap a ham sandwich and a hard-boiled egg up in greaseproof paper and thread my mittens through the arms of my coat.
* For readers from the Americas: "pants" in my land are "underwear" or "knickers'. I am not fond of the word "panties", which conjures up the words "middle aged", "cheap porn", "nylon" and "gusset". (My mother has just suggested "knicky-knocky-noos", which I had forgotten about, probably with very good reason.)
** So saying, if anyone ever wanted to get me a proper, custom-made, boned corset from Rigby and Peller I'd be bang up for it.
6 comments:
Let me suggest the wonderful 1940's expresison "step-ins". I seem to recall this being used in the Topper books.
Excuse me, I meant
1940s' expression
Head cold.
Oh, and I forgot to say hurrah for Winter Holiday. I am a great Ransome fan (though I never got on with Great Northern for some reason)
I wanted to shag the Amazon girls in the back of the dinghy.
I was only about 12. I will go to hell.
Only Arthur Ransome could make brown bread and marmalade sound like nectar and ambrosia. The telegram about "if not duffers, won't drown" passed into the folk memory of our family. I still use that trick, learned from Swallows and Amazons, of staying on course by keeping two landmarks in line as I approach them - not to navigate my clinker-built boat into a secret harbour, sadly, but to locate my dog's poo on the other side of the park (so that I can "bag it and bin it"). I haven't trained him to stay with it and, anyway, that would probably be unsuccessful, as remaining in the vicinity of a smell that identifies you and your location is counter-evolutionary. Ask any zebra.
Sounds perfect to me. I'm doing a jigsaw and eating ccld chipolata.
I agree children od today need to be alternately dosed with adventure and boredom - they don't get enough of either IMHO.
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