Crap Dress

I have had a trip down memory lane today.

In my distant past, we played at being pirates, earnestly and enthusiastically, every weekend. You can do these things even when you are grown up, and spectacularly good fun it is too.

I do not do this any more, not because I have outgrown it, but because I have got to work at weekends in order to finance my children’s nose-twistingly expensive public school education.

I still read on Facebook about all of the other pirates, though, most of whom are still playing out at weekends, and think longingly that I might have another go when the children have grown up. I will be sixty then, though, which by any standards is a bit elderly for playing out in the woods with a rubber sword.

In those bygone-days, we manufactured costumes for game playing with great enthusiasm. Our own tended to be detailed and fanciful, made of sheepskin and leather from Age Concern, and decorated with braid and plastic jewellery. However, any costume created out of an old sheet and a couple of curtains with much imagination and minimal sewing ability, and intended to convince the other players and any passing audience that the wearer was the High Priest of Yin, or The Guardian Of The Sacred Crystals, or other walk-on bit part, was known as a Crap Dress.

The last is a very complicated sentence. I have re-read it a couple of times, but decided to leave it. Just plan your breathing carefully around the commas.

We made lots of Crap Dresses, largely out of old sheet sleeping bags chucked out by the YHA, because of being on an even more minimal budget than I am now.

Sometimes the genre was expanded to include Crap Ghosts, because sheet sleeping bags were handy for that.

I have made another one today.

I was putting the finishing touches to Oliver’s pirate shirt on my sewing machine when it became painfully obvious that what I had in fact created was undoubtedly a Crap Dress.

I hope he does not mind. It is of a sort worn by many a pirate before him, mostly in that it is made out of an old sheet. Also it has a couple of authentic bloodstains, due to unexpected pins.

Whilst I was sewing, Mark got on with building his shed, and in between he made us a press for apples. I have not used this yet, because it needs a car jack and a clean bucket. We can pinch a jack out of the back of one of the taxis, but the bucket will have to wait until we have earned some cash and can pop round to the ironmonger’s.

I am very excited about this. We will have our own home made cider, unless it goes wrong, in which case we will have our own home-made vinegar. This has happened to me before. It is less exciting but still useful, and can be saved for next year’s chutney.

We can’t do the apples just yet anyway, because we are going to go away tomorrow. Oliver is singing in a choir event at Ampleforth school, which I why I had to hurry up and finish his costume. We are going to take the camper van and go and listen to him sing, and then  chug back slowly and probably get drunk with my friend Kate on the way home.

It is going to be brilliant to see him.

Mark buzzed off to get his hair cut in honour of the occasion, and I made some coffee cream chocolate and some fudge to take with us. It is important to have nice things to eat when you are on holiday. I flavoured the chocolate with some spiced brandy, it is bitter and salty and wonderful.

After that I was late for everything. Mark bathed the dogs whilst I got ready for work. This was jolly brave of him, because they smelled revolting, which was the point. You can more or less cope with revolting dogs in a house, but they are not nice in a camper van.

I am looking forward to it very much.

I have attached a picture of our Day’s Achievements, and also, at the bottom, a picture of our pirates playing out in the woods. They are hiding behind a tree. I wasn’t there for that one, but it is such a brilliant picture, brings back so many happy memories, that I thought I would put it on anyway. I hope nobody minds.