Shoes Were For Sunday by Molly Weir Page A

in imitation of Victorian music-hallballad, ‘Be kind to auld Grannie, for noo she is frail, like a time-shattered tree bending low in the Gale’, and I wept copiously because I thought the words were so touching and so beautiful. Somebody else sang ‘O’ a’ the airts the wind can blaw’, and my mother wept, and we all had a lovely time.
    We played forfeits, and bee baw babbity and games involving wee bits of paper and pencil. And then we had an eightsome reel, and quadrilles, and there wasn’t a cheep of protest from the family living underneath.
    The door of our house was wide open most of the evening, and anybody who felt like it was welcome to come in and see the bride and toast her health. The fun went on till midnight, and when at last they all departed, our faces were flushed with triumph and happiness, for we had had a wonderful wedding. ‘A great celebration, Jeannie,’ they said to my mother as they left. ‘A splendid repast and a grand wedding.’
    Looking back, I realized all this must have involved an enormous amount of work for my mother, and it must have taken days to get cleared up in spite of help from caterers. But they were unsophisticated times, and a passionate belief in our ability to put on a show helped to make the work light. And for many moons afterwards, whenever anyone mentioned any grand occasion, I always countered with ‘Just like my auntie’s wedding, when we had real waitresses in our house and thousands of steak pies’.

Six
    When I was a wee girl if you said that something looked ‘hand-made’ it was the greatest insult you could hurl at the disparaged article. To be exactly the same as everyone else was the look that was coveted, and great was the anguish suffered by children whose mothers had to make do and mend from anything which came to hand.
    Luckily I didn’t mind a bit, which was just as well, for I don’t think my mother was ever able to afford a single garment which the school required. Apart from my boots, which, of course, had to be bought because none of us had figured out how to make them from anything lying around the house, practically everything was hand-made, and mostly out of things first worn by my mother or somebody else. The endless hours and patience which must have gone into fashioning my garments weren’t met with a scowl by me, for I was well aware of the tightness of the family budget.
    Grannie knitted my long black stockings, and I took as much pride as she did in the ‘intakes’ at the back, which made the shape and could truly be described as ‘fully-fashioned’. How well they clung to my ankles, and rose long and snug right to the tops of my legs, where they met the buttons on my Liberty bodice.
    When her tweed skirt was beyond hope for her own use, it was cunningly fashioned into a little pleated skirt for me, and we both thought I was elegance itself when this was topped with an exactly matching woollen jumper Grannie knitted. This wool we got from somebody who worked in a wool warehouse, and it was going practically free because it had become entangled, and the firm couldn’t waste time rewinding it. A great bargain this. In fact I wore this particular jumper for years, with Grannie cleverly changing the collar each winter. One year it sported a grey angora collar, the next a red and white striped one, and latterly a white rabbit’s wool one. I was elated when my school-teacher said in its final winter, ‘Another new jumper from your grannie’s clever needles?’, and I was able to say demurely, but proudly, ‘No, miss, just a new collar.’ And I never forgot that lesson, that it is amazingly easy to ring the changes on an old garment by a new eye-catching accessory.
    We saw nothing frumpty in wearing ‘winter combs’. They were cosy and comforting in wintry weather, both indoors and out, for in spite of the coal fire in the range, it could be cold in the tenements. Grannie was able to knit us lovely cosy combs in pale grey or