Colour Me July! #26

Walking To School, January 1980

Today's "Colour Me July!" piece is a wee memory of walking to school in January 1980.

"It was a two pair o' socks morning!"

That's me, so it is. My usual singing away to myself on the way to school on a winter's morning in 1980. It would have been a two pair of socks morning, and probably there would have been insoles cut out from an old carpet in these boots too for extra insulation.

The parka coat, or 'snorkel' as we used to call them was one of the warmest pieces of clothing ever. We were always warned before we left the house though to be careful and look where we were going - which was made a bit harder since the fur hood  ended about a foot away from your face. It was like looking through a periscope - no wonder so many folk from that time joined the navy and became submariners.

The colour of your parka gave you a feeling of belonging to a particular gang - like a caste system. I think the coolest were the Navy blues, followed by the black, then the green. Nae luck if you had been handed doon one of those yucky brown ones though. 

Most clothes back then were handed down, so i suppose it was the luck of the draw which ones your big cousins had thought was the coolest colour five years earlier, before it would pass down the chain to eventually arrive at me, since I was the youngest. "Ach, he'll grow into it!" was a war cry heard in many households of the seventies and eighties.

I remember losing my parka, though, when it was getting towards the summer, and it being reported on the 'news bulletin' on the blackboard which we would then copy into our jotters - 'David's parka has been lost!'. However, it made a reappearance later that night when my cousins arrived at the house with it saying that they had wrestled it off the 'rag and bone' man. The next days headline read - 'David's parka has been found!'

These coats were made to last forever - I don't think they decompose. There'll probably be some wee bird in a tree now with bits of it made into a nest!

Anyway, have a creative day and i'll see ye tomorra!

​Davy