Differences.....

Spring seems to have disappeared for a few days. It is cold and wet, and grey and revolting, so there is a big pot of butternut soup bubbling on the stove and I am about to retire to the couch with the bag of wool and crochet hook and make some flowers.

Watching TV was a little odd this morning. As in all the BBC channels had disappeared into the ether. Then I remembered that today is Day One of the phased digital switch over here in my part of the land, and so I had to work out how to re-tune the televisions. Oh happy day. The little one was no problem at all. The big one, however, took ages and was totally confusing. But hallelujah, the good old Beeb is back in the right place at last. And the cheerful news is that we have to do the whole thing again in 2 weeks. Oh well. At least I should remember what to do. It is just 2 weeks, but you never know...... I tend to forget things 5 minutes after I learn them nowadays.

The fashion comments from yesterday were hilarious. I realised that I had not even got as far as the unfortunate trend in floral leggings, so there will definitely have to be more "down memory lane" posts. Mum and I were discussing fashions this morning, and she started talking about Christian Dior's influence on hems - how they were a foot above floor level, and then she moved on to the fifties styles with masses of petticoats and tight waists, and I had to remind her that THOSE DID NOT APPLY TO ME!!!! Even if it does seem as though I have been here for ever. I was wearing knitted pilchers and bonnets and......does anyone know what I am talking about????

Something else I thought about after I read a comment by an English friend, is how much the war influenced fashion here, and around the world. My mother could wear a designer dress for her 18th or 21st birthday in the late 40s. That would not have happened here. Rationing went on for a long time after the war. All of the fashion industry had been absorbed into other essential wartime manufacture.

Fashion was out of the picture, quite understandably. And that would have significantly altered the way people dressed. I mean, for goodness sake, what would you do with an evening dress when everyday clothing was in very short supply?? It was not important. The fancy stuff. But elsewhere in the world, things were available. Other new world countries had not been bombed to bits. They could keep the element of choice available. But here.....it was very different. And that difference lasted a long time.

How very different our worlds are. We speak the same language, but the ways we dressed, grew up, lived, are all so varied. That is one of the reasons I love meeting new friends here. We have wildly different stories to tell.

I remember reading Wild Swans by Jung Chang many years ago, and being totally appalled to realise that while she was the same age as me (or round there), I had had absolutely no idea of what growing up in China was like for my contemporaries. None whatsoever. And this from someone who has always had a fascination for the globe, and its peoples, and who had spent decades trying to learn as much as possible about it all. I mean, I knew more about the Luo people in Africa than I knew of China. There were not many evening dresses in Jung Chang's early life.

And then there are the contrasts in the ways my British friends grew up in post-war Britain and the way I grew up at the bottom of Africa........

But that too can wait for another time. If I remember, of course!