Excerpt from my current reading
[From a humorous memoir of family hiking vacations in the Lake District in the 1930's...]
"Lobstone Band was a cleft, part mine spoil, part erosion, descending abruptly into Rosthwaite. From the top it looked like a stone and scree [loose rock debris] waterfall disappearing into a void, and Grandpa went over the edge with Rob, faithfully copying the heel and loose kneed method of descent, following after. The women were left to fend for themselves.
'Dig in your heels,' said Mother, 'and on no account run.' This was good advice if I could have followed it, but my smooth soled school shoes were like skis on the loose scree and in no time I was on a disaster course, finishing up sprawled against a boulder.
Aunt Meg followed more circumspectly but holding her stomach with an expression of agony. 'It's no good, I'll have to stop. My corselette's worked up.'
Aunt Meg wasn't exactly fat, but she wasn't exactly thin either and her corselette, a pink rubber tube, supposedly ironed out the bulges without the constriction of whalebone corsets. But, like squeezed toothpaste, the bulges had to go somewhere, and though the punched airholes in the rubber tube offered slight escape for some of it, giving her, when she removed the garment, an embossed look, like a pink blotter cover, most of it was shot up under her rib cage. This caused some distortion and danger to the lungs if the corselette lost its never secure anchorage and in working up put yet more pressure on the stomach. She was quite purple.
'Quick, behind that rock!' said Mother, and to me -- 'keep watch!'
This was my usual role at these delicate moments, but what Mother and Aunt Meg thought I could do to bar the path to a really determined band of walkers I never discovered.
When we finally picked our way to the bottom of that grim chimney my knee had bled into my sock, Aunt Meg, though a better colour, was tearful as Mother had threatened to burn her corselette, and Mother's hair was coming down again."
--A Lakeland Summer by Elizabeth Battrick, published 1979
"Lobstone Band was a cleft, part mine spoil, part erosion, descending abruptly into Rosthwaite. From the top it looked like a stone and scree [loose rock debris] waterfall disappearing into a void, and Grandpa went over the edge with Rob, faithfully copying the heel and loose kneed method of descent, following after. The women were left to fend for themselves.
'Dig in your heels,' said Mother, 'and on no account run.' This was good advice if I could have followed it, but my smooth soled school shoes were like skis on the loose scree and in no time I was on a disaster course, finishing up sprawled against a boulder.
Aunt Meg followed more circumspectly but holding her stomach with an expression of agony. 'It's no good, I'll have to stop. My corselette's worked up.'
Aunt Meg wasn't exactly fat, but she wasn't exactly thin either and her corselette, a pink rubber tube, supposedly ironed out the bulges without the constriction of whalebone corsets. But, like squeezed toothpaste, the bulges had to go somewhere, and though the punched airholes in the rubber tube offered slight escape for some of it, giving her, when she removed the garment, an embossed look, like a pink blotter cover, most of it was shot up under her rib cage. This caused some distortion and danger to the lungs if the corselette lost its never secure anchorage and in working up put yet more pressure on the stomach. She was quite purple.
'Quick, behind that rock!' said Mother, and to me -- 'keep watch!'
This was my usual role at these delicate moments, but what Mother and Aunt Meg thought I could do to bar the path to a really determined band of walkers I never discovered.
When we finally picked our way to the bottom of that grim chimney my knee had bled into my sock, Aunt Meg, though a better colour, was tearful as Mother had threatened to burn her corselette, and Mother's hair was coming down again."
--A Lakeland Summer by Elizabeth Battrick, published 1979
posted by Laura at
2:18 PM
2 Comments:
That is hysterically funny. I'm going to have to try and find that book!
That is very funny, thank you for sharing. Blessings,Lynn.
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