The Agatha d'Ascoyne Papers

 A problem sent in to Home Chat's Agony Aunt in 1950...and the advice received: Dear Mrs Jim I am in rather a quandary and I wonder if you can help me. I have a very good job in London and earn an excellent salary. My boyfriend is in the army now, stationed near London, so that I see him very frequently, but soon I hope he'll be demobbed and then he says he's going back to Scotland to take up his old job as an engineer. He wants me to marry him and go back with him, but I don't feel that I want to give up my work here and go back to a place where I shall be a stranger. He will be earning sufficient to keep me comfortably,  so there won't be any real need for me to get a new job. I feel though that I'm going to miss having my own money and all my friends. What would you advise me to do? If you really love him, my dear, you won't hesitate when it comes to making the final decision. You're still young and I don't think you'll find this new life so v...

 "Did Your Husband Choose Badly?" This is the actual title of a magazine article from 1946, written by Clare Breton-Smith. I transcribe below the opening paragraphs (I doubt you can abide any more of it) with my thoughts in italics. We stood eagerly on the pavement, craning our necks as the bride and groom came out. "Isn't she lovely...? Look at her dress...I hope he's good to her..." I heard on all sides. I listened to the comments around me, gazing with stupidly misted eyes at the radiant faces of the young couple, and remembering a certain summer's day fifteen years ago. Then I thought of something. You often hear people hope that the man will be a good husband - how often do they wonder if the girl will prove a good wife? (Except that is, the man's mother, who naturally cannot believe that any girl is good enough for her boy!) Would this bride be a good wife? Are you a good wife? Am I? So far so Barbara Cartland...brace yourself, here it comes......

Throughout time, both men and women have participated in the art of sewing. But, as usual, when a man sews it's a professional job, something worth paying for. He is a Tailor. The sewing that women carry out has never had the same status. Making clothes for the family came under the heading of domestic duties. A woman who sewed things for others was a jobbing seamstress, earning a bit of pin money. Tapestries, samplers and embroideries dating back centuries were never recognised as an art, despite arguably requiring more skill and talent than some internationally renowned artworks produced by men. Intricate quilts were just blankets, made to use up fabric scraps. Things have changed a little...but not enough and maybe that's because we can just buy anything we want cheap as we like, instead of having to make it - not because of any great strides in feminism. More women are reclaiming the traditional activities that we like to keep alive as a form of witchcraft. Making kitchen r...

I've been watching 'Waterloo Road' starring John Mills. Reading Jessica Mann's book, "The Fifties Mystique" just after watching this film highlighted its role in the propaganda of the time. Tilly (Joy Shelton) is verging on straying from her husband (John Mills). We are given a reason for her dissatisfaction with her marriage. Her husband has failed to fulfil her desire to have a family before going off to war. She has, apparently, nothing to focus on. It is implicit that if she were fulfilling her natural maternal urges, then she wouldn't be threatening to do unnatural things with Stewart Granger. And towards the end of the film, she has been forgiven and there is a baby in a pram. This is the happy ending. The final scene sees the doctor (Alistair Sim) delivering a speech in support of children. From our perspective this is old fashioned and sentimental. But there is more to it than sentiment. Jessica Mann tells us on pp 28-30 of her book: Wome...

   My name is Charity Harding and I run my own little haberdashery shop. Somewhere in England, sometime in the 20th century, I place my tape measure around my neck every morning and oil my scissors. I wear my spectacles around my neck too, they hang on a golden chain which is dotted with pearls at regular intervals. It often gets tangled with my tape measure. The spectacles bounce off my ample bosom as I trot up and down my pockmarked wooden counter.  I could see that it was time to draw Mrs Hill into my night scheme. She was browsing with the look of a woman who has been up half the night, sweating like a pudding in a pan. She'd already picked up the same Butterick pattern three times and put it back again and now she was ruffling through my lace offcuts without enthusiasm.   "Mrs Hill." I put my specs on. I find that people are more likely to do as they're told if I can peer at them over the top of my bi-focals. "Mrs Hill, just come over here and tell me what ...

Throughout time, both men and women have participated in the art of sewing. But, as usual, when a man sews it's a professional job, something worth paying for. He is a Tailor. The sewing that women carry out has never had the same status. Making clothes for the family came under the heading of domestic duties. A woman who sewed things for others was a jobbing seamstress, earning a bit of pin money. Tapestries, samplers and embroideries dating back centuries were never recognised as an art, despite arguably requiring more skill and talent than some internationally renowned artworks produced by men. Intricate quilts were just blankets, made to use up fabric scraps. Things have changed a little...but not enough and maybe that's because we can just buy anything we want cheap as we like, instead of having to make it - not because of any great strides in feminism. More women are reclaiming the traditional activities that we like to keep alive as a form of witchcraft. Making kitchen r...

Temporary Accommodation Chapter 1 The houses on Rington Road all look the same. A front door and a bow window downstairs; two narrow windows upstairs. The front doors open onto a tiny front garden, which barely reaches out further than the sill of the bay window. The gardens are bordered by a brick wall and a gate, where the narrow flagged path from the front door terminates. Nothing much grows here, only a smattering of London Pride. Solid rows of bricks on either side of the street funnel a cold wind that comes off the Thames.  Mrs Lavender Bidder and her lodger, Miss Marigold Walbrook, live at number 45. Marigold is a lodger in the legal sense, anyway. But to the widowed and now childless Mrs Bidder, the daughter of her late sister’s neighbour counts as family. Marigold has the best bedroom at the front of the house for a very reasonable rent. Each evening, after her stage performance has been dissected over a shared bottle of Bass beer, she lets herself into the still hallway a...