´óÏó´«Ã½

My clothes of course I grew out of and we had a ‘bartering’ system with adverts in the local paper so that families swapped children’s clothes. No rubber for soles and heels on shoes so they had wooden soles and heels with steel tips and ‘horseshoes’ on the heels. I liked these because you could pretend to be a German soldier they made such a noise, but the wood was not pliable and made walking rather tiring. A pair of sandals I grew out of; my mother cut off the toe-piece to let my toes stick out and sewed small pieces of coloured wool in the holes. She did the same for sandals of my friends so we went into our ‘Red Indian’ phase then and all padded about in our ‘deer-hide’ moccasins pretending to be Hiawatha and so on.

When my skirts could no longer be lengthened at the hem my mother attached them to a broad band of green baize cut from the card table and with a pullover pulled well down, the baize did not show, it was nice and warm in winter too.
KAYE LE CHEMINANT

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.