Another photo from
the family album.
Kate likes to wear her rainwear
- even at this early age
A year or so later, the “raspberry bush” adventure took place. We have referred to it ever since by that term and “raspberry picking” has become a euphemism for tieing-up or other restaint type of games between Jos and myself.
It was a Saturday afternoon and our parents having again gone out somewhere, had asked us to pick the raspberries off a group of bushes at the bottom of the garden. As it so happened, I had my raincoat with me -a blue rubberised one that I described above- probably because my mother had told me to avoid lying on the ground in my summer dress.
We didn’t overexert ourselves, it was a long tedious task and I was lying on my back, on my raincoat under a bush, picking raspberries only within reach, with Jos doing the same a little way off. In a desultory way, I recall, we tried to eat berries direct from the overhanging branches without using our hands but Jos kept accusing me of cheating, as indeed I was. To stop such cheating, he suggested buttoning me up in my raincoat with my arms inside! Trying to eat the berries within reach was a good game but, as my head kept falling back on the grass, I suggested that Jos put my hood up to keep my hair from getting dirty. I wore plaits in those days, can you imagine it? I always used to pin my plaits up with hairclips when wearing anything on my head and, pinioned as I was inside my raincoat, Jos had to do it for me on this occasion. I soon got the knack of eating all the raspberries within reach and Jos half dragged me to the next bush and I started on more.
Too easy, said Jos. I was to be blindfolded as well!
He went off, leaving me lying there, but was soon back with a silk headscarf of mother's. This he tied over my eyes and over the hood, at the same time rendering me just a little bit more helpless by buckling the belt of the raincoat around me so that my arms were more securely fastened inside. I was instructed to try again. I found that I acyually liked the sensation and can remember it now. The scarf tied tightly over my eyes and the hood now taut against my ears and the feathery sensation of the raspberry leaves against my nose as I nuzzled around for juicy fat berries. I said, as I realise now was doubtless to Jos’s delight, that I quite liked it and asked him to sit me up in the middle of the bushes. He didn’t object, in fact he hoisted me to my feet, led me blindly around the bushes and then sat me in a more advantageous position.
It was some time before I was released whilst he had meantime picked enough berries to satisfy our parents on their return. There were no complaints from him that day that I wasn’t doing my fair share of the work.
Just how much Jos liked the sight of his sister in her raincoat, hooded, bound and blindfolded, I was one day going to realise, of course.
Episode 102 continued.
I’ve always had a leaning towards nursing. At the age of about eight, I wanted a nurse’s uniform and was given a girlish version, which I proudly wore in a summer fete fancy dress competition. This outfit, believe it or not, led to the next rainwear incident that I shall recount.
Jos soon got in on the act. We had seen one of those television dramas, probably Dr. Kildare, and we decided to hold our own hospital operation one afternoon when our parents happened to be out. Jos was to be the doctor and I the nurse and, after the usual squabbling, I was sent off round the corner to get David, one of our friends, “to be operated on” as I told his mother, who laughed and sent him with me.
When we got back, Jos was ready for gowning up. He had fetched my raincoat from the hall – a new blue rubber-lined one with an attached hood, which had the same rubber lining inside, and which had replaced the black rubber-surfaced raincoat which I had now grown out of and which had been discarded. Jos proposed that I helped him into it, back to front. Devious, wasn’t he?
Although I wasn’t aware of it then. I thought anything he did was marvellous – even putting my raincoat on in such a manner, especially when he then fitted the hood over his nose and mouth to represent a surgeons mask, quite realistically. David, who I remember clearly was wearing shorts and only a string vest for some reason, lay on the kitchen table and I was instructed to administer the anaesthetic. In the kitchen cupboard was a rubber hot water bottle with a funnel shaped mouth. With the stopper taken out, I placed the funnel over David’s nose and mouth. It fitted quite well and I was instructed to hold it firmly in place, causing the rubber bottle to inflate and deflate as he breathed. I actually liked doing this, but I allowed him a little fresh air from time to time, and we progressed through some high drama, the details of which I can’t now remember. I do remember, however, Jos’s 'surgeon's mask' - my raincoat’s hood – also inflating and deflating as he breathed. I do remember thinking it wasn’t fair that he should be wearing it. I wanted to wear it myself in that fashion whilst I carried out my interesting anaesthetic application duties. I also remember trying it on later in my bedroom in the same manner, back to front with the hood lifted over the lower part of my face. Then, perhaps only a little reluctantly, as Jos had done, I tied it there, as I then realised Jos had also done, with the ties that were attached to the hood.
What David thought and presumably went home and told his mother, I don’t know.
5:16