K is for Knickers

I have posted before about the joy of a pack of smooth, new, white knickers, so I won't revisit that subject. No. Today I want to talk about a particular pair of knckers; the knickers I shall never forget.

At my grammar school, we had to wear navy knickers for PE (with white "knicker linings" underneath, although I've never worked out how anyone could enforce this bizarre rule in a girls' day school). The navy knickers were the kind with elasticated legs and waist. Safe knickers, if you're running about or hanging upside down from the wall bars.

But my mother, a stranger fo convention, bought me bright, royal blue knickers*.

How I hated those knickers. Quite apart from the fact that they were Not Allowed, they showed me up. While everyone else was leaping about in regulation navy knickers, I was cringing on the sidelines in my royal blue ones. Apart from anything else, how on earth did my mother find them? I have never, before or since, seen royal blue knickers. School knickers were, bottle green, grey, possibly maroon - but royal blue?

Eventually, my mother bought me navy ones, but they weren't the right kind. They were brief, revealing, not the kind you want to wear for doing handstands (I've no idea where she found those, either). I never did have the right knickers, and the memory of the Wrong Knickers has remained with me all my life. While I have worn many pairs of knickers during my life, those royal blue ones (and their little navy successors) are the only ones I can remember.

Mum, how COULD you?

*Those knickers feature in my novel The Birds, the Bees and Other Secrets, so they were of some use in the end.