The hair of the yak

 

Everyone has their own stories of life in lockdown. Around our house it mainly focusses on “grandma school”. As the spare adult in our household, I get to teach the 7-year-old; the 12-year-old fortunately takes care of himself. Thankfully the teachers prepare well-devised learning segments because too much of what the children learn these days is unfamiliar. For instance, do any of my fellow oldies know what “turnaround facts” are? Easy, peasy … 2+3=5 and 3+2=5; wasn’t that obvious! Then there’s “Friends of Ten” and “Juicy Words” (otherwise known as adjectives). This afternoon we’re going to do Olympic work like paper plate discus and marshmallow shot-put; that should be fun. We’re also working on writing stories with adjectives, capital letters and adequate punctuation.

Another aspect of life-in-lockdown concerns the fact that hairdressers are closed. As a result of this, my fringe has grown so long that I resemble a yak. There’s something about hair which is vital to one’s appearance; if your hair looks right, then you look right – well, right-er if you know what I mean.

I had very long and very thick hair for all of my childhood. It was usually in one or two very long and very thick plaits which I couldn’t manage so I had to wait for my mother to plait my hair each morning before I did anything. Hair washing was an agonising process as this was in the days before conditioner. After the washing, my very long and very thick hair became a very large bird’s nest of knots which took at least two adults to comb and reduced me always to tears. Eventually at the age of 13 I rebelled; the only rebellion I recall in my childhood. Off the hair came, at my mother’s hairdresser. She was crying, I was crying, the hairdresser was crying and when we got home, my father was crying.

Throughout my teenage years, hair became other sorts of problems. At one point it was fashionable to have very straight hair. We addressed this in two ways. One was pinning wet hair around our heads in a spiral until it dried; the other was to iron it on the ironing board! When the fashion reversed, as fashions usually do, and I needed curly hair, I would go to bed with my hair wound round curlers held in place by very uncomfortable sticks. I once had a perm (short for permanent wave) which in my case made me look like a visitor from darkest Oblovia. It wasn’t until I was in my 30s and visited my mother’s talented hairdresser that I discovered I actually had curly hair which waved into delicious loose ringlets. I had a good hair day for a decade! In my late 40s, however, I was concerned, as I’ve said before, not to look like a geriatric Shirley Temple and reluctantly cut the ringlets off.

Of course hair is not confined to one’s head. My friends and I were deeply troubled in teenage by dark hair on our arms. The remedy was to coat the arms with a paste of peroxide and ammonia which lightened the hair when it didn’t turn it orange. Hair on our legs was easily solved by shaving which was thought of as faintly dashing. In later years waxing was the go. Hair under the arms was not talked about but dealt with in the same way as legs.

Which leaves the final hair problem – hair on the face!

Fortunately, the natural down on my cheeks was very light, which considering the darkness of all my other hair was a blessing. But the dark hair on my upper lip was a big problem. It was dealt with either by the peroxide and ammonia treatment or waxed completely off, a painful but effective solution. In later life I broke all the rules and shaved it off which was supposed to lead to it coming back thicker than ever. I can confidently assert this is not true.

And then, in Germaine Greer’s immortal words: “You know you’re getting old when your hair migrates from your legs to your chin.” I anticipate having a deep and personal relationship with a beautician to the end of my life.

 

Quote of the week from Chambers Dictionary of Modern Quotations:

Clarence Darrow: “I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with a lot of pleasure.”

 

 

 Bags of rags

 

When I win the lottery – which will be a trifle difficult as I’ve never bought a lottery ticket – I intend to throw the household’s collection of towels away and buy a completely new set which all match.

I might then move on to sheets, pillowcases, quilt covers and the like. Then I’ll start on tablecloths, napkins and place-mats. I’ll buy some new cutlery – it’s extraordinary how cutlery disappears, just like single socks. We use a lovely set of George Jensen stainless steel cutlery from the ‘70s but mysteriously there are missing forks and spoons but not knives.

Then I might go to various home-wear shops and buy lots and lots of things I’ve never thought of before.

I can justify this farrago of spending by reflecting on my current status as queen of recycling.

I have bags for odd socks, paper rubbish, glass, bottles and cans, hangers, soft plastics and bags of rags. Which reminds me that when newly married I answered the door of our flat to an elderly lady who was collecting rags for charity; I had to admit that at that stage of my life I hadn’t any.

All our unusable clothing (items among them which fitted when I wasn’t fat) goes to Vinnies or the Red Cross shop. Also consigned to re-sale are the buying mistakes – rather too many of those.

Used A4 paper gets torn across twice to make scribble notelets which sit in a container on my desk. Batteries are collected and eventually taken to the store which provides for their recycling.

Shoe boxes are used for storing various collections of children’s bits and pieces and the firm plastic covering of new sheets and the like is used in various ways including storing handbags on an open shelf. I also use them as storage in my sewing room. I collect tins, the sort that hold yummy biscuits or Christmas cake. These I use to store individual projects of embroidery or patchworking. It’s just as well I have them as rather too often I start an embroidery or other project and just don’t get around to finishing it.

And about boxes, and the rigid plastic containers which once held delicious chocolates … I have a number in my laundry cupboards for storing various things. One box has our world class collection of computer, phone and other cables which I have neatly wound up and tied (yes, I know I’m obnoxiously anal!). Another has electrical bits and bobs including plugs and cords of various dimensions while one of the smaller boxes holds silver and brass cleaner and their rags. Somewhat bigger boxes – purchased and not re-purposed – house collections of household cleaning sprays and the like. On top of the washing machine is one container with laundry powder and another with de-staining spray, soaker and fabric softener (probably unnecessary but it smells nice).

All in all I think I deserve that lottery win but I’m reminded of the old joke: Moishe prays to God: “God, you know I’m a good man, I’m charitable, I go to the synagogue every week, I volunteer at the homeless shelter … would it be so hard to let me win the lottery.” God replies: “Moishe, I know you’re a good man, you’re charitable, you come faithfully to shule each week, you volunteer at the homeless shelter. But Moishe, meet me half way. Buy a ticket!”

 

Quote of the week from Chambers Dictionary of Modern Quotations:

“Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man. Communism is the complete opposite.”

Described by Laurence J. Peter as a “Polish proverb”.

My couturier of choice 

These days my couturier of choice is K-Mart; if I lived closer to Warringah Mall I might add Target and Best and Less.

I’ve worn a skirt once in four years as the life I now lead leans towards trousers. The trousers are topped by very large shirts as there is rather more of me than there used to be. Often the net worth of my entire outfit, shoes included, is less than the cost of the scarf I might be wearing.

Sometimes I think back to the Olden Days and what was required then in the clothes department. For example, there was never a time when I didn’t have at least three long dresses in the wardrobe because they were worn to weddings and other formal parties. They often had a stole (Olden Days speak for a wrap) or a bolero (Olden Days speak for short jacket} which only covered the back and arms. This was because the Olden Days rules said you had to have your arms covered while dining; the stole or bolero came off at the end of the meal ready for dancing. We also had cocktail dresses – short dresses in some evening-ish material often also with jackets of varying sorts. Other styles of dress were for other occasions and woe betide if you wore the wrong type of garment for the occasion – utter humiliation!

In my young teenage, we wore very full skirts held out by several petticoats, some of them ribbed. You can see them in videos of the Rock ‘n Roll era. Then there was a vogue for very tight trousers made of flowered furnishing material. I was thin in those days but I still had to lie on the floor to zip these trousers up. The same happened with the advent of jeans which in the Olden Days were not made of stretch material.

The era of short skirts was ushered in by the appearance of British model Jean Shrimpton at the 1956 Melbourne Cup with a dress a modest few inches above the knee. It was considered scandalous but inevitably ushered in the mini skirt era, followed inexorably by the maxi skirt and somewhere in there were the midi skirts. I still have somewhere packed away the outfit I wore for my 21^st; the skirt was so short I’m surprised I didn’t have matching undies. And there were hot pants, the shortest of short shorts.

Shoes at sometime in my late teenage were corked heel wedges which curiously have woven in and out of fashion since the 1930s. As I grew older and a tad more elegant, I began to wear stilettos which got higher and higher over the decades. Regrettably, because they make your posture look nice and your legs shapely, I can’t go above a two-inch heel these days, if that. Mostly it’s sneakers or sandals.

As my working life extended to outrageous hours and required lots of bits and bobs to carry around, the size of my handbags increased and I now have quite a collection of bags-which-are-never-used but I can’t bear to throw out. As I now don’t have to carry packets of cigarettes and lighters around, a set of makeup and all the debris of a working mother’s life my bags have become smaller and smaller.

In the Olden Days, you wore a slip (petticoat) under your dress and had to be certain your Sunday wasn’t longer than your Monday – or your slip was showing below your dress hem. We were admonished by our mothers never to leave the house with a safety pin holding the elastic of our knickers (undies) together, just in case we got run over and the ambulance men would see. We also wore “step-ins”, extremely tight elasticised tummy squashers which I think had gizmos hanging down in four places to attach your stockings, long before stocking-tights.

When I see the pregnant women these days stuffing their bumps into tight dresses or t-shirts I recall the maternity clothes of the 1970s, large shapeless sacks with blouses or jumpers underneath.

And a word about hats. I’ve always adored hats and in my teenage years this was on the shopping list for going to synagogue on the High Holydays. However I always wanted a great big wheel of a straw hat which I was never permitted to buy; as I was/am fairly short, my mother said I would look like a mushroom. Happily the last decade-plus of my working life was spent at The Great Synagogues so hats became de rigueur and I was at last able to build up a collection.

 

Quote of the week from Chambers Dictionary of Modern Quotations:

British novelist Anita Brookner in a letter to The Times: “I am forty six and have been for some years past”.

 

 

 

The words that were

The names of things evolve through time. Take sneakers, for example. They were once sports shoes, sandshoes and plimsolls, named after the plimsoll line, a reference mark located on a ship's hull which indicates the maximum depth to which the vessel may be safely immersed when loaded with cargo (explanation courtesy of Google). Presumably plimsolls were invented for wearing aboard ship, possibly on those interminable journeys between England and India. Speaking of which, one of the explanations for the origins of the word “posh” comes from the same slice of history. Apparently, the upper-class types who peopled the British raj had “POSH” stencilled on their luggage meaning “Port Out, Starboard Home” so their cabins would always face the shore.

Another word with older iterations is bedspread which was coverlet which was counterpane; doona was originally duvet and eiderdown (named for the down of eider ducks). Knitwear was jumpers was jerseys was guernseys. Nail polish was nail varnish. Then for Australians, movie was cinema was flicks was filums was pitchers. Servo was service station was garage; garages had real people in them who came out to fill up your car and put pressure in your tires.

Then there are sayings which are falling into disuse like “out at woop woop”, meaning very far away or “back o’ Bourke”, even further away. The dog might still be on the tucker box somewhere near Gundagai, but the word tucker has almost disappeared. In an effort to support the continued use of Aussie slang, tucker is what I provide to our cockatoo flock, the dog and occasionally the grandchildren.

There are also habits which possibly should die but haven’t. For example, when forced to a sudden stop when driving, my left hand lashes out and thumps the person sitting in the passenger seat across the chest. Or the car seat itself when unoccupied. Obviously this habit came from the days without seat-belts but it is so hard-wired I simply can’t stop. What I have thankfully grown out of is being sick on car trips. As a small child I vomited my way to a holiday in Surfers Paradise, as a result of which my brother and I were sent up by plane the next Christmas.

People in my family held fast to some pieces of folk wisdom. If you spilled salt, you had to throw a pinch over your shoulder; I think the devil came into this somehow. You were never to walk under ladders but only around them, a relatively sensible dictum. It was bad luck to open an umbrella inside the house, possibly because it would be bad luck to have a spoke in your eye.

 

If someone sneezed, someone else would say “God bless” or “bless you”. One explanation also refers to the devil that you sneezed out! Triskaidekaphobia, or fear of the number 13, was not marked in my family but I just thought I’d show off by knowing the word for it!

 

What was very common in my family and indeed among everyone I knew was the need to knock on wood, or say knock on wood, whenever you spoke about something positive or hoped for good luck to continue. Frequently my family and those Jewish people around us, used another phrase, in Yiddish/Hebrew: Kein ayin hara. Run together in the way in was by English Yiddish-speakers, it came out as keneinahora (k’nayn a hora). Kein means no or without in German and Yiddish, whilst ayin hara refers to the evil eye in Hebrew. So conversation would go like this: she’s got a real talent for the piano, keneinahora; he’s growing up to be a real mensh (a good man in Yiddish), keneinahora. My English-born grandmother, who lived with us, used this phrase all the time. According to British rabbi, Rabbi Julian Sinclair, the evil eye is an ancient Jewish superstition. Good fortune should not be celebrated too loudly and ostentatiously, lest it draw the attention of the evil eye, a spiritual force that would snatch away our blessings.

 

Other sayings and habits were much more domestic along the lines of “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”. Did this, I wonder, emanate from some early apple marketing board? We didn’t eat watermelon after swimming (or possibly swam after eating watermelon), we were “happy little Vegemites” from the advertising slogan, a watched pot didn’t boil, our Sunday shouldn’t be longer than our Monday (your slip/petticoat shouldn’t hang below your skirt) and as you grew older, if you were female, you shouldn’t look like “mutton dressed up like lamb”

 

Quote of the week from Chambers Dictionary of Modern Quotations.

US Comedian George Burns: “The secret of acting is sincerity. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”