107 My Austrian Holiday

 

                       I buy myself what was to become my favourite mackintosh

 

                I didn’t have to wait long to acquire what I considered to be a perfect mackintosh.

 

I was lucky at the outset and this is how it happened. When I left school, I only had my grey school gabardine together with the grey rubber-lined cape and matching mackintosh, the latter two spending most of the time hidden in the roof of the summerhouse.

    It appeared that I should next acquire a navy blue gabardine, that being the stipulated wear of nurses in training.

 

I went on holiday that year with a party of students to Innsbruck in Austria and whilst there I became aware of the nice rubbery-looking raincoats that a lot of Austrians wore, men and women alike.

I thought they would appeal to Jos, so one day, instead of walking in the mountains with the others, I went into town, looked around the big stores and soon found what I was looking for. They were black or grey rubber-surfaced with a cotton backing and although I was more used to rubber lining, they did look and feel attractive.

 

I wandered about for some time debating whether to buy one when, by chance, I found different types in a more specialist type of shop. These were really different and appealed immensely to me and there was no more debating.

After a fair amount of careful trying on, I bought one.

 

As it was a lovely day, I could hardly wear it out but as soon as I was back in our hostel, I slipped into the toilet and tried it on. I’d never seen this sort of mackintosh in England and I was to find it to be quite rare, although I did see some in Austria before we left.

 

It is light blue in colour, a colour that suits me, with rubber on both sides, inside and out!

It has an attached hood and a zip which closes all the way up, even up over the bottom of the hood itself, to close over my chin and even over my mouth if I duck my head down slightly. When closed right up like that, the hood then quite tightly frames my face, very different from the hoods on my two grey macks, although it still has that 'school-girl' shape with two points at the back on top. As I've said before, hoods are quite important to me (and Jos, for that matter).     It has a tie belt, no pockets and the time I had spent searching for a suitable size – the biggest they had in stock, was well rewarded as it was, and still is, only just oversize for me, reaching down to mid-calf and the sleeves long enough so that the cuffs brush my knuckles.

I thought it was gorgeous and gladly showed it off to the others when it rained a few days later. They probably thought I was mad spending my precious holiday money on such a thing. I hadn't room to pack it for the train journey home, so I wore it - all the way, or at least until we got to Victoria station in London. Then I reluctantly carried it back to Norwich.

 

So the first time Jos came to visit me after my return, I actually had two new items to show him. The first was my nurse’s uniform gabardine raincoat. My father had actually bought me this whilst taking me into Norwich at the start of my training. Being generous when it comes to me, he had insisted on buying the best we could find. It was navy blue, double breasted, and had a comfortable woollen tartan plaid lining. It was nicely cut with a broad buckled belt and a nice full hood, this self-lined with the navy blue material, not the woollen plaid.

 

So, next time Jos visited me in my flat in Norwich which, by the way, my father had also generously arranged for me within one of his building developments on the outskirts of Norwich, I put this new gaberdine raincoat on, buttoned it up and belted it tightly and showed it off, raising the hood and tieing it in place. Jos liked it, of course.

Said it was ‘classy’ which was praise indeed.

It didn’t need to be rubberised with an expensive, well cut coat like that. However it still appealed to him – and me, of course

 

            My other new mack was to be a surprise so, still wearing my tightly belted new gaberdine,

                                                                    I blindfolded him!

                                       That got him into the right 'mood' straight away, of course.

I got the new Austrian one out of the cupboard and he could tell from the lovely rustling what to expect. What happened next I will leave to your imagination.

           Or perhaps not! It may anyway get described in the supplement to our web-site that Jos himself is writing.