Aqua Manda!

I remember the spicy orange smell of the bath oil when I was in my early teens. It was our greatest wish for birthday and Christmas presents.

Just thinking of the name, Aqua Manda, transports me back to those years when my biggest problems were how to kiss and how to get a boyfriend to kiss. Discos and school and for some reason it’s always winter term in my memories. Perhaps I’d used up the Christmas supply by the spring?

I looked the perfume up a few years ago and found gift sets on eBay which had been carefully put by from the 60s and 70s. The sellers couldn’t guarantee the state of the product if opened.

 I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while and guess what? Aqua Manda and Aqua Citra are back on the market, reintroduced in 2013!! I was looking for pictures and information and was very pleasantly surprised. I remember having some Aqua Citra, but I don’t remember the smell at all. I wonder how it would smell on me today, almost 50 years later.

I wanted to put a picture here, but don’t want to break the copy write rules so here is a link to the website.

Later, when I started work, I bought myself a bottle of Meadowsong perfume which smelled of freshly mown grass. I didn’t use it for long as I had a boyfriend (yes; I had found one by then) who suffered from hay fever and the smell was too much for him.

If this post has sent you on a trip down memory lane please leave a comment.  I'd love to read what you have to say.

Back to school - time for excuses

I think that this list was sent to me by a friend who teaches in the US. I've been hanging onto it for a moment and decided to share it after rereading it today. It brought tears of laughter to my eyes.

The Queen saw me in my knickers!

I recently left a comment on a post by Connie. It was about school uniforms. Just before I started secondary school at the age of twelve my mum received a list of what I’d need and what I should wear for school. Right down to underwear! I really don’t know how my poor mum afforded all of these new clothes for me – which she had to repeat for my two sisters and brother in later years.

She had to buy the uniform from specially named shops and they were very expensive, but hard wearing. She bought me a ‘lovely’ skirt which was much too long – she said I’d grow into it – I never did grow that tall. Miniskirts were in and we all used to roll up our skirts and hold down the lumpy waistband with a tightly done up belt (non uniform, but well hidden).

In the summer months we were expected to wear straw boaters. They made excellent Frisbees. Can you imagine the glee on the very last day of school as these horrible clothes were consigned to the bin? I clearly remember cutting my school tie up.

For sport in our first year we wore a pair of navy blue knickers (over the regulation navy blue knickers we were already wearing) and a white t shirt. I can assure you that it was very cold in the snow and ice the wrong end of a hockey pitch.

One day the Queen was visiting somewhere locally and we were told that she would pass by the school at a certain time and we would all be out on the pavement to wave to her. This coincided with sport for my class and being the youngest (and shortest)we would be standing at the front. So that is how the Queen saw me in my knickers.