1930

The events of one particular Sunday in 1930 still fill me with amusement. At the time I was living in Sutton Surrey, England. Prior to that time, I had seen a leaflet in our Scotch Wool store which showed a beautiful model wearing a very attractive swimsuit.

This I decided was just what I needed. It had a yacht on the chest in the centre front and the legs were knitted to just above the knees. So I started knitting. When the garment was finished I felt very proud of my work, and longed to be able to wear it.

So my fiance and I decided to have a day by the sea, and booked a train excursion the following Sunday. We set off quite early in the morning keen to enjoy our day by the sea. It was a beautiful day and the train was full of happy trippers, all looking forward to a lovely day at the beach.
We felt we were in heaven as we watched the beautiful countryside rush by with its refreshing peace and tranquillity, so different from our normal everyday lives.
At last we arrived and joined with the crowd rushing to get out of the station. We walked to the beach enjoying the lovely salty air, but the beach was crowded and all the changing sheds were occupied. So we continued to walk until we came to another beach with few people on it and where there were large rocks to cover us when we wanted to change. My fiance changed a little distance away as we were very modest in those days!

I was so proud of my swimsuit that I was not in any hurry to go into the water. But after a while we ventured into the water - oh my goodness, what was happening?

Something was definitely wrong. My beautiful swimsuit had dropped almost to my feet as soon as it got wet. I grabbed it from my ankles only to feel my knitted yacht was below my waist. I hadn’t enough hands to hold it all up! Feeling very upset and confused I called to my fiance, and with his help I managed to shuffle back to the beach, finding it difficult to walk with so much swimsuit around my legs.

We sheltered behind a boat which was on the beach and laughed heartily as I wrapped a towel around me so that I could make my way back to where we had left our clothes. In retrospect it was all very funny and the swimsuit was double its original length!
With such a hilarious start we had a very happy day, and all too soon we had to make our way back to the station to board our train. After we had been travelling about forty five minutes our train suddenly stopped and we were eventually told by the guard that a long delay was expected. Time went on and darkness fell before we resumed our journey.

When we arrived back in London it was after midnight and no buses were available so we were stranded for the night. Crowds were making their way to the station waiting rooms and we fortunately managed to get seats.

I was appalled to think we would have to sit all night on these uncomfortable benchlike seats, but there seemed to be no alternative. So I decided to phone my parents because I knew they would be worried. My mother answered and was most disturbed by our news. She tried to think of a way to get us home, but at that time of night there seemed no way this could be done. She said that Dad would have been happy to drive our van, but as he had no rear red lights there was no way that the police would allow him to drive to London which was quite a distance. Then Dad came to the phone and said, “I will see if I can find a way round this problem and if it is at all possible I will come for you. But don’t count on it, just keep a look out in case I can rig something up. I knew that Dad was very good at getting around problems, but I didn’t see how he could get rear lights at that time of night.
As I walked back to the waiting room I realized that it was going to be a very noisy night because there were many trippers unable to get home and they were shouting and singing as loud as they could. So we sat feeling very sorry for ourselves for what seemed an endless time, unable to sleep in such uncomfortable conditions. Then to my delight I saw Dad approaching !!

What a welcome he got! We were stiff and cold but so delighted to be leaving that noisy dusty station. Dad grinned cheerfully and took us to where he had left the van. As we drew near I noticed that the rear red lights looked unusually large and bulky. “Dad,” I said, “what have you wrapped around those lights?” Dad laughed and replied, “The only thing I could find that was red to wrap around some clear lights that I had was your mother’s red corsets. She insisted that I must not break the bones in them and spoil her corset, but I managed alright although they do look rather bulky. They will see us home and mum can have them back in one piece!” How we laughed particularly my fiance who was not so used to Dad’s unusual way of tackling things. Dad’s ingenuity and the story of my swimsuit have given us many laughs since then.

When I hung my swimsuit on the line to dry the following day it looked so ridiculous that I wish we had taken a photo of it. The Scotch Wool Shop manageress was most apologetic and very willing to replace the wool, but I decided not to make another swimsuit. Once was enough!