I taught them to cook vidya4 - Flipbook - Page 53
Autumn Half Term 1972
Rosehips
t’s half term week and I drive up the M1 from London to Kettering
to visit my family, especially my grandmother. Autumn, season
of mists and mellow fruitfulness, is my favourite time of year and
as October is my birthday month, it’s a month that matters.
Every time I go home I drive my mother to Leicester market. The
fabric stalls are such a treat. Leicester is a great textile manufacturing
city and the tables are piled with rolls of the latest designs used in
the fashion shops in London. I buy yards of flowered crimplene for a
frock, silky polyester for a blouse, and some strange black and white
stuff for a garment of my invention. Sewing and the radio are my
companions in the empty days of my home visits and I rattle away
on my mother’s electric Singer sewing machine making new stuff for
my wardrobe. Eat your heart out Barbara Hulanicki and Vivienne
Westwood. I’m making Biba copies and Westwood ragged skirts. This
Kettering fashionista is returning to London with shorter hemlines,
a pair of thigh high brown suede boots and the shortest purple suede
skirt on Leicester market. I discover later that the purple dye comes
off on my legs and makes them look bruised and stains the fabric on
my mother’s favourite settee when I sit down.
Before I go back, we drive around the country lanes doing
some wild foraging. I’m going to show the students hawthorn
berries and bitter sloes, and we pick branches of rosehips and
some wild crab apples.
My first paid job as a child was collecting rosehips to take to Park
Road Infants School to sell for thrupence a pound. Every weekend
I
51