The uplifting experience

I found this book in a Nailsworth charity shop today. I've wanted to own a copy for at least ten years. It's called The 197Os scrapbook, and it's not all about shoes! Magazines, clothing, food, confectionery and travel are also included. The images are from the Robert Opie collection. (Do go to the Museum of Brands and Packaging in London's Notting Hill if you get the chance! The packaging collection is housed there).

Honestly, I don't think I ever owned a pair of platform shoes, because I was only a child in the early 70s, but I did wear wedges in the late 70s. We called them Oil rigs. Oil production boomed in the North Sea in the 70s. My granny pushed a tartan shopping trolley with a sticker on it saying, It's Scotland's oil! My brother went to school in Aberdeenshire and was able to explain away our father's embarrassing absence by saying that he worked on the rigs. (In fact, he was living la vida loca in Mexico or Belize).

Meanwhile, at my school, we had a ridiculous assembly ceremony every Friday, where the prefects all sat in a semicircle on the stage. When it was time to leave, they stood up first and walked down the steps ahead of us commoners. One day, as they stood up to go, there was a commotion caused by Mary M, she of the red hair and black shiny oil rigs, tumbling off her platform soles and turning her ankle.

This must have been a moment of great humiliation for Mary. Unfortunately, it has left such a lasting impression on me that I can no longer remember anything else about the hapless Mary M.