At the first sign of warmer weather it is my guess that many mauvish-white legs will be scurrying into back gardens and secretly exposing themselves to all available bursts of sunshine. With luck they soon weather to a creamy tan. Whereupon with relief one can cast off a major problem for a few months. A problem which can be summed up in one word: tights.
I like the idea of tights. In fact, once my stockings had all reached the secondary use stage, it was a moment of pure, reckless pleasure to toss all my girdles away. (I haven’t come across a secondary use for girdles, but laddered stockings can, of course, be utilized in all sorts of ways, ranging from stuffing cushions to tying up rose bushes.) Henceforth it was going to be tights only for me.
Alas, I soon discovered that, in this respect as in so many others, I am not what you might call a standard size. Somewhere between the mini-people and the Mrs Michelins there should be a Warrior Maiden category.
I think I have been recommended to try just about every make of tights on the market. ‘I can absolutely guarantee that Brand X will fit even your figure,’ a friend says earnestly.
‘I cut this out of the paper for you,’ says another. ‘It says the manufacturers designed their Size Triple A for giantesses.’
So I scurry off fervently to the shops, but it nearly always turns out that I am a giantess in the wrong places.
At one stage I thought I’d solved the problem. A biggish girl told me to try a famous make of pantie-hose. Well, I did. Have you ever stood on a main-line railway station awaiting an overdue train, while the pantie half of your hose creeps inexorably down over your hips? Let me tell you, it saps confidence. If I so much as flexed my toes my waist elastic dropped another inch. Luckily I was wearing a tent coat with two large, low-slung pockets. Diving both hands into the pockets I caught the pants just as they slithered down past the point where furtive shrugging helps. Pressing my knees together I minced towards the newly-arrived train. Commuters hastily averted pitying looks as, shoulders hunched, arms pressed to sides, legs gripped together, I somehow clambered aboard …
Then one of those ‘do-it-yourself’ spasms came over me. I still had several pairs of imperishable, thickly ribbed winter stockings which happened to be extra long. So why not sew the tops of these to the legs of assorted pants?
Now I still don’t know why this didn’t work but it didn’t. The stockings wrinkled, the joining seams split, the knickers disintegrated. There must be some built-in fully-fashioned formula to manufactured pantie-hose which my efforts lacked. In this case the stresses and strains, on garment and wearer, were terrific. Clad in my hybrid hose, I strode forth like Hamlet and once more sidled home in a state of collapse.
I still liked the idea of tights and the next few months were a time of expense and experiment. Grimly I staggered around in everything from foreign white ones which looked as if my legs were bandaged, to dwarf-built models with the crutch between the knees.
Discussion among friends proved conclusively that I am not alone in this. People come in a vast range of shapes and sizes. Mention the subject at any gathering and you will hear a babble of voices telling you that they have a long body but short legs/a short body but long legs/wedge-shaped legs and fat feet/fat legs and thin feet/etc, etc.
Even quite dignified ladies leap into contorted positions in their eagerness to show you how they have to fold the feet of their tights in half or arrange Sellotaped tucks above the knee.
One said she always wore her pants over the top for ‘reasons of security’. Another reached just inside the neck of her shirtwaister and waggled something brown and elasticated. ‘It’s my tights,’ she sighed. ‘I’m so short in the body.’
But the saddest lady of all said: ‘My problem is that I have a large waist, narrow hips, fat legs and tiny feet.’ To do this poor soul’s situation justice you should really pause here and try to visualize her figure.
For any other Rhinemaiden-shaped readers like me, who may still be searching, I have at last discovered that Wolford’s No 4 really do fit tall, big-boned women, but at 16s. a pair one thinks twice about wearing them for sweeping the stairs. Anyway they get snapped up around here before they hit the counter.
So now I eagerly await each ray of spring sunshine. The deck-chair and sun-tan oil are standing by. Palely I loiter at the garden door, legs at the ready.