I wrote this more recently at the time when we decided to produce this journal and 'publish' for others to take an interest in.

 

My name is Kathleen and I’m a nurse by profession. Joscelyn, usually shortened to Jos, is my other half. Due partly to the pressures of my job, together with other reasons that I will outline, we have never acquired a family. We do have, however, a nice large house and a reasonably full social life now that we are approaching retirement age. We do a certain amount of entertaining at home, some of it official for some local social organisations and, as a consequence, occasionally put people up overnight. In fact, we have almost become an unofficial Bed and Breakfast provider, the Town Hall even sometimes asks us to put up visiting dignitaries and pays us to do so!

 

In our guest bedroom, there is a large wardrobe for the use of such visitors and which is therefore empty except, as I explain to such guests when I show them to the room for their use, I keep some of my winter outdoor-wear there, out of the way. Hanging neatly on coat-hangers, are two fur coats (inherited!), a couple of other winter coats and my old nurse uniform navy blue gabardine raincoat, together with an even older, but treasured, mackintosh. The mackintosh is shiny black rubber-surfaced material, double- breasted and with a detachable hood. This mackintosh is left like this, amongst the others coats, as a bit of a diversion, to see if we can awaken interest in any of our guests in the harmless obsession which Jos and myself share. A couple of cunningly placed lengths of my hair will indicate to me later whether the mackintosh has been moved or even tried on. It occasionally is!

 

Sometimes, when we are politely entertaining such guests, having explained, after being asked how long we have been married, that we are, in fact, brother and sister, they sometimes ask how it is that I’ve never married ‘That’s a bit of a joke’ I will reply. In fact, two jokes. One is that I’ve never had time with my nursing career and secondly, it’s always been difficult to get any man to even look at me, never mind want to marry me!’ This usually leads to an awkward silence, at which point, Jos will come in with a well- rehearsed response. ‘You know that’s not true, Kathleen. You would have no difficulty getting someone to marry you. But it would be difficult for him to live with you and do I know it!” I’m not the easiest of people to get on with! Jos will look enquiringly at me at that point and, if I don’t shake my head warningly, he’ll continue. “In any case, none of the men who have actually been interested in my darling sister, have been the owner of a rainwear shop, so they haven’t stood much of a chance.” Asked to explain, as he usually is, Jos tells them that I have a childish idiosyncrasy for raincoats and mackintoshes, whilst I feebly protest in an embarrassed fashion. The conversation then takes all sorts of twists, as you can imagine.

In fact, of course, what I should point out is that it is Jos, not me, who has the ‘hang-up’ and that his ‘darling sister’ is only a darling because she has allowed herself to be well trained in such matters. Jos and I share what our parents might have called ‘an unhealthy interest’ They never did, because we made sure that they didn’t find out about our ‘consuming interest’ or perhaps ‘compelling attraction’ to what we usually refer to as traditionally styled rainwear made from the now out-dated materials such as gabardine or the type of rubberised materials that pre-dated the use of plastic and nylon How all this has come about, I have set out below in a series of reminiscences, our ‘Journal’. Encouraged by Jos, it is written as if to a few special friends, who shared our interest. Some even asked for expansions or, as you will see, for some small contributions by Jos.

 

So now onto our Journal proper which, as I will explain, I started writing in my mid-twenties.