Episode 105 Summer holiday escapades

 

                             At last - uninhibited mackintosh and other related (!) activities.

 

Most summers, the whole family took a holiday at Aldeburgh on the Suffolk coast.

We had, and still have, a cottage there which is let out to other holidaying families, pays for itself and provides then and now for our own holiday. My parents loved it as we did in our younger days, but in our 'teens it began to get boring after a few days of swimming and sitting on the beach. It was just within a day’s cycling distance of home so, in our teenage years, Jos and I used to cycle there whilst our parents drove.

In the summer that I eventually left school, we all stayed there again as usual. It was suggested that Jos and I took a few days cycle tour whilst there, staying perhaps one night at a Youth Hostel, the next night at home, the following night at a different Hostel and then back to the cottage. Jos and I went along with this suggestion quite happily but Jos had an alternative plan up his sleeve.

 

Why mess about Youth Hostelling? Here was a chance to be alone at home, not for the usual couple of hours in the summerhouse but all day (and night) with the house to ourselves. We therefore planned to cycle straight home, spend the first and second nights there and what would we do on the day at home? Of course! What an opportunity!

All went according to plan, we arrived to a house that was shut up, cool and empty.

Jos recovered his polka-dot from where-ever he currently hid it, I recovered my two grey macks from the summer-house roof and, as if as a special bonus, we found that Mother had left her bottle-green mackintosh hanging in the hall cupboard, she having a horrible transparent pakamac kept permanently at the cottage for holidays.

 

We managed, or at least I know I managed, to wait until the next morning before starting what then seemed a great adventure.

 

Jos went down first the following morning to lay the breakfast, make tea and toast and boil the eggs. Then he called up the stairs. “No breakfast unless you’re properly dressed in your mackintosh!”

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Needing no further encouragement, I slipped my grey school mackintosh on over my nightdress and, securely hooded and tightly belted, went through to the conservatory where we normally had breakfast. Jos had taken the precaution of retreating to the kitchen so that he could check through the serving hatch that I was suitably dressed. Apparently satisfied,  came in with the coffee pot and – yes! hooded and tightly belted into his polka-dot with, as I could see, pyjamas underneath. 

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         My heart gave its now customary leap at the sight of him dressed in the way we  loved to dress.

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It wasn’t long before inhibitions were discarded along with the nightwear and by the time I came to do the washing up and prepare something to put on one side for lunch, I had allowed myself to be talked into discarding all under-clothes, reversing my grey mackintosh which Jos had kindly buttoned up the back. The hood was raised over my nose and mouth, which Jos had thoughtfully clothes-pegged into place, loose enough to avoid my protests and, as if that was not enough of a handicap in carrying out those household chores, he had kindly helped me into my cape, the right way round, hood also raised and tied neatly into place. My bare feet were thrust into glossy black rubber wellingtons.

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Outside, the sun shone and the birds sang and Jos suggested raspberry picking. By this time tying each other up was accepted as yet another particular pleasure. We had had our childhood games, progressed through Jos's 'Raspberry- picking adventures and the blind-man’s buff of the summer-house, the appropriately named ‘Outward Bound’ techniques and nowadays we just accepted tying up and blindfolding as a pleasurable activity to go with mackintoshes. There were a few silky sort of scarves stored in a cupboard in the summer-house, just for that purpose.  More fun than Scrabble, anyway.

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So, with only a notional show of reluctance, I agreed to a compromise. Jos would be allowed to secure me in any manner he chose up until lunchtime, in return for allowing me to secure him likewise for the rest of the day.

At least I would have the time to think up something special for him.

 

Jos and I occasionally recall the particular excitement of that first opportunity of any real lack of restraint in our special infatuation.

So at last, we succeeded in attaining that stimulating feeling of abandonment to our weakness by wearing only mackintoshes without the fear of detection. As if that in itself was not enough, then each of us in turn endured the apprehension of knowing that one was going to be rendered helpless for an indefinite time, but compensated by the exhilarating anticipation of then, in turn, being able to restrain a willing victim in any manner that one could be devise.

 

Needless to say, even in those early days, such activities were sure to result in sex of some form or other which now came as no surprise to us, following that first time, now some years ago, when I innocently double-hooded Jos in the summer-house with such startling results. I had read D.H.Lawrence, like all the other girls, had carried out anatomical investigations with a few other boys as well as with Jos, sometimes with messy results. I don’t remember that I had any qualms at that age about mixing mackintoshes, doubtful 'games' - not just blindmans buff - together with sex, and Jos.

 

So, having completed the household chores, still back-to-front in my mackintosh, caped and double hooded as before,  I sat opposite Jos at the kitchen table and was instructed to undo my cape and to put my hands on the table, palms together as if praying, whilst he tied my middle fingers together with a length of cord.

Then, as requested, I stood up and went through a practised trick of stepping unaided through my tied hands so that they were then behind me, inside the cape which Jos was soon buttoning up again. He untied and released both of my hoods and, as the front hood fell away from my nose and mouth, I gulped a quick breath of fresh air as I guessed, what was to follow. Was I about to re-discover the dark and stifling sensation of being properly double hooded? Inside the grey rubbery constraint of the two hoods, one of which I had myself trimmed and stitched ready for such a moment as this?

Yes, but not quite yet. Jos disappeared out of the room but was soon back again, now in his special ‘operating gown’. Remember how I described that long-ago occasion when I, in my nurse’s outfit assisted in the operation on David in his string vest?

Now Jos was ‘gowned’ in his navy blue polka-dot mackintosh, back to front with the hood secured as the mask over nose and mouth but now also wearing Mother’s bottle-green mackintosh over it, the right way around, hood up and belted.

The urgent movement of the mask mirrored his quickened breathing, which together with that now familiar prominent bulge below the tight belt, indicated that he, at least, was enjoying himself in anticipation of my discomfiture.

Anyway, this time was no exception. The mackintosh hood was replaced over my nose and mouth as before but now Jos tied a white silk scarf over my eyes in such a manner that it also secured the top edge of the hood over my nose and across my cheeks. This made breathing even more difficult than before and I had to drag every breath against the rubber-lined material, which flattened against my features as I tried to do so. This, of course, was that sensation of occlusion in rubber that so bewitched Jos. Obviously, air must find its way in, and out for that matter, otherwise this exciting sensation changes to ear-singing suffocation and panic, a technique that he overcame and mastered in times to come.

 

I may return later and describe that day’s activities in detail, how at one stage I was pinioned to the ground in the orchard with croquet hoops and how, during the afternoon whilst I mowed the lawns, possibly to the puzzlement of any spying neighbours, still mackintoshed despite there being no sign of rain, I had the task of emptying each of the many loads of grass cuttings into the compost pit in which lay a helpless bound (with scarves) and mackintoshed Jos, soon buried under fresh cuttings but now wearing a gas mask! (Surprised?  See Episode 105 (2)  Wearing it in such a way that he could continue to breathe through the long tube that particular mask had, itself fixed to one of the pit’s supports.

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