123 Shiny black rubber
Jos first acquired a shiny black rubber mack whilst he was away for some time working in the Midlands. (See Episode 115 of our alternative Journal, cross reference else-where).
It wasn’t until his recent thirty-third birthday that that one was replaced as agreed for that list as I described before. For that occasion I treated him to a made-to-measure mackintosh and I myself supervised the measuring and fitting at the specialist shop in Bournemouth. Between the helpful shop owner and myself we got it just perfect. Made from just the right type of shiny black rubber-surfaced material, the mackintosh is double breasted, belted and hangs down to just below knee-length. Needless to say, it has a separate hood and a sou’wester, both in self-lined material, that is with the black rubber surface inside and out and the hood is attached by buttons under the collar. He also had a pair of trousers made. Not over-trousers but a slim tailored pair with pockets and belt. He also acquired at the same time a pair of black rubber riding boots. Dressed in all this, the trousers tucked into the tops of the boots, he gives such a good impression of a German war-time SS officer, that I am only too keen to play the role of a captured French member of the resistance. Just not a lot of the resistance, however! (any French or German readers- please don't take offence!)
The material is not rubber-lined, inside is very dark blue cotton material, nice and warm, comfortable to wear for long periods. However, the hood and trimmings such as the collar and hems do have matching rubber inside yet do not make the material any thicker than the rest of the mackintosh.
So, of course, I was surprised with a similar mackintosh for my birthday the following year. (See Episode 122) We then had between us two hoods of the self lined material, so that one of us could wear both at once for playing at the French Resistant's torturing.. It was usually Jos who really loved this double hooding, as we call it. One hood buttoned on back-to-front, the other buttoned on the right way around and then both hoods raised, the back-to-front one first and the other then raised to cover it, fixing it in position. Almost, but not quite, airtight.
It took a little time for me to be persuaded to wear my SBR with nothing underneath. Being cotton material inside, it was very different from wearing the rubber-lined mackintoshes naked, which was all I had experienced up to now and had grown to love. There were the hems and collar of course which contrasted when you slid into it and the pockets were also rubber inside. The real attraction, of course,came if we both dressed in our new SBRs at the same time and could see each other, or even help one another to dress. Jos showed me how to slide my hands into the tightened belt each side of the buckle and slide them backwards to smooth the front as he liked to see it. I soon noticed, looking in the bedroom mirror, that the skirt then bulged out sideways, then too wide for my tall frame. I did prefer to have some vertical folds visible at the front.
However, in return for such a nice present, I had to concede to Jos’s even more particular wishes. For these, we went to a more specialist place in Beaminster in Dorset, I think, at the same time spending a few days seeing that part of the world. My outfit, therefore was now expanded somewhat to include a skirt matching the mack together with an unusual totally enclosing hood in the same rubber both sides material as the hoods we already had.
This new enclosing hood is shaped similarly to our other hoods, that is with the two points as in the 'schoolgirl's hood' style but it completely covers the whole head and fits right down over the shoulders. There are a few small breathing holes at the front close together. Jos calls it an occlusion hood! It is put on first and the mackintosh follows after. The wearer can breathe, albeit with a little difficulty but only until the mack is fully buttoned up over the bottom of the hood and then the bottom of the hood becomes sealed completely airtight except for the small amount of air that can be gasped through those breathing holes. If Jos sqeezes out a certain amount of the air inside, it then becomes fully effective, heavenly for Jos, torture for me.
We had always whispered threats to each other of being ‘tied up and tortured’. If it was Jos wearing it, I remembered with pleasure my childish fascination in seeing him, doubles hooded in the mackintoshes available to us then, as he struggled against the ballooning and tight collapsing of the rubberised material over his head.
We pretended to be terrified at the thought of 'torture', even though at the worst we were perhaps only slightly alarmed. So Jos sometimes actually wanted to be the victim, provided I was the torturer, and I can’t pretend that I disliked being either the torturer or the victim. I probably felt more uneasy than he did and, although I realised that, amongst other things, he would have loved to gag me, I firmly refused this with the threat that if he ever did gag me, it would be the end of our activities. I knew that providing I was free to speak and in the unlikely event of wanting to protest in earnest at what he was doing, he would listen and take notice. So, no gagging.
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3:18
So now it was shiny black rubber-surfaced things that appealed, ‘SBR’ as it is referred to by other enthusiasts and we were both, through our respective careers, keeping reasonably fit but we could still pursue our 'raspberry-picking' activities in combination with our rubber activities. We did have a little contact with other enthusiasts as I’ll describe briefly next, but mainly we kept ourselves to ourselves
.So look carefully at this photo.(which is not me, nor is it our our mack, but very similar indeed.
- the lovely folds of the material, especially on her lower sleeves, just like ours.
- the material is probably like ours, being not too heavy in weight, dark blue cotton with the nice black rubber surface outside. In places, particularly the lapels, where the inner surface is exposed in normal use, the material is the same shiny black rubber-surfaced on both sides. Our hoods and sou’westers are entirely in this double- surfaced material.
- the tightly buckled belt and the tightened straps around the cuffs, just like ours.
- the nicely cut lapels, just waiting to be buttoned over, just like ours which do get buttoned up fairly quickly.
- the epaulettes that she, and we, have.- the generous collar, just the right height if she would get round to raising it - if you look really carefully at the collar to her right, our left, you will see it has a little extended tab for fastening the collar across once it is up, and you can just see the metal clip which fastens it to a clip on the other side. Ours has the clip but fastens direct to the collar, no tab extension.
- the pockets are just right with the deeply slanting openings, which don’t spoil the line of the skirt. Not those with a horizontal top which collect the rain if you are not careful. I have had debates in the past about having pockets of any sort at all! Women don’t need pockets, they spoil the flowing lines, I’m told, in any case everything can go into your handbag.
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.I’m sure that if I, or anyone else for that matter, saw someone wearing a mackintosh like this these days, it would attract attention – not all favourable. Those, again, were the days when they were not that uncommon at all.