Smoking on the beach in wet denim flares

...courtesy of the magazines stored in my study....



















The year was 1976 and twenty year olds Mark and Trish were in love. With double denim, smoking, getting wet and .... each other.

Trish laughed freely at Mark's jokes - it took her attention away from his Ford Cortina-sized thighs and water buffalo hair. Mark thrilled at his obvious sense of humour and the opportunity it gave him to sneak a quick peek down her cleavage.



















In 1977, they backpacked around Europe together, electing to smoke Dunhill in the hopes that being from a country famous only for Dame Edna, Barry Crocker and Skippy might make them seem a bit more sophisticated. Walks on the beach were a distant memory as they didn't want to slice their toes on the icy grey cobble of Brighton.



















Back in Australia for the lazy days of summer they bought newer, darker denim jeans and went back to the beach.

Why hadn't Mark thought to bring a hook, some bait and line, Trish wondered.
Why did Trish always fart on the picnic hamper, Mark despaired.



















Never mind, they had Vok Creme de Menthe to see them through the awkward silences over the card table at the caravan park, the obligatory snog in the beanbag at the Thomas's house for New Year's Eve and a fun mouthwash alternative to reduce the effect of ash-tray breath.



















But ABBA's domination of the music charts had finally ended and Mark and Trish's coffers were empty after shelling out forty bucks a fortnight on the mortgage for their mission brown brick veneer with cork tiling and exposed ceiling beams.

On the back of the Womens' Weekly Hoges was trying to persuade them to switch to the cheaper and bigger Winnie Blues. He might also have been hinting at at least giving 'batting for the other side' a burl or, at the very least, try some fancy dress, but Mark wasn't keen.



















Trish put the sparkle back into their relationship by making breakfast extra-special.



















..... But on the weekends Mark ruined every single picnic by gutzing down the Flake bar before they'd even arrived at the park and by generating too much BO in his polyester bodyshirt and woollen vest.

'It should be me who is sulking, not him,' Trish fumed, wishing that he'd also stop wittering about the cool new style for lampshades and could bloody well shove that candle up somewhere far darker than the neck of the now-empty Rose bottle.



















Mark knew that he was in a slump, so he bought a three-piece tweed suit with leather elbow patches, some stacked cuban heels, grew a large and luxuriant porn star mo and used only gold-plated desk accessories. This effort might have been successful if he wasn't a cable layer for Telecom.



















The early eighties saw them still together but rigid, bitter and able to afford joyless European holidays. Unfortunately with each other.

Trish's hair was now like her demeanour: frosted, and Mark would throw a fainting fit if she ever tried starting a sentence with, 'We need to talk. About those jeans tucked into your socks and being honest about WHO knitted you that abominable deer cardigan jumper!'



















By 1988, Mark was in the arms of mysterious knitter, Sheryl from Elna and Trish found her solace not in alcohol or cigarettes but her new comforts: phenylanaline and aspartame and boob-flattening lycra.

There's a lesson in this cautionary tale for all of us. Somewhere.....

White bathers

As part of my 'To Do List' before starting the full time job next week was to clear out the study.

The usual stuff - books I read once, enjoyed a lot but am unlikely to find the time to read again (after all, why re-read when there's heaps more out there to discover), old articles, ancient text books (will Love Chunks ever let go of 1985 first year uni textbook 'The Calculus with Analytic Geometry' by Leithold), ancient CD-roms, unwanted gifts and magazines.

The magazines had been collected as a memory-booster for a memoir I was planning (still planning) to write and scanning some of the pictures has been about the only thing I have been able to tick off the To Do List.

Some of them I'd like to share with you, based on themes. Today - as the heading may suggest - is for That Special Time of the Month. Don't run away yet lads - if nothing else, it'll make you realise that accidentally cracking a horn at a public swimming pool when you were fourteen is nothing on having to do with this sort of crap every 28 days.

I've posted this one before, but it bears a second look because it comes from the year I was born - 1968. Yes, a date so far in the past that when I fill in any surveys or information online and those automatic drop-down lists appear, my birth year is not visible until I scroll.... and scroll ..... and scroll ...... dammit my mind has wandered and I got to 1923 ...... and scroll.....

In 1968 the Modess Model wasn't in white bathers but a stiff, white, three-tiered dress with a tiny waist. Let's face it, this chick clearly didn't suffer pre or mid-menstrual bloating although if she did she'd have been able to funnel it down to the invisible area between her knees and thighs. Any questions you asked were just answered with her staring vaguely to her left and answering breathily, "Because." That blue shield of protection was the only answer she ever needed.

How she replaced her blue polythene for protection on three sides whilst wearing white gloves would have been a mighty challenge.

By 1976, whites and pastels had been crushed under the onslaught of unabashed 1970s colour. This room was presumably a homage to the inside of a teenage girl's uterus, despite the fact that the model playing a guitar to her stuffed toy collection was pushing thirty and had possibly shagged at least 50% of Sherbet, Skyhooks and the Little River Band.

In 1979, roller skating was all the rage. I was only eleven then and did not yet have need of Dr Whites, but would have yearned for a pair of her powder-blue skating shoes. All I had were those poxy metal base-and-wheels that screwed onto your own shoes with the plate able to be pulled out to accommodate larger shoes when the need arose.

Even so, the Dr Whites' I saw in my mothers bathroom drawer (sorry, Mum, but I loved to snoop in there and use your Nivea and a smear of ancient pot-o-gloss) would have been clearly visible had she ever had the time or inclination to go skating around and around the double basket ball courts at the Murray Bridge Showgrounds to 'My Sharona' in pale jean shorts.

Indeed, the pads then were no smaller than a single bed mattress and Skater Chick above would have had the very visible tail end of a huge rectangle imprint bulging out her arse.

Skater Chick might have been proud to tell Women's Weekly Readers all over the nation that she chose Dr Whites, but she sure as hell wasn't in need of them the day the photographer arrived.

The early eighties meant that white dresses, red rooms and roller disco were abandoned for beige Hallmark card scenes of mothers, daughters and ..... dogs. I remember this particular ad and also remember thinking, 'Why is the girl wearing ankle freezer jeans? If her Mum cares about her so much and wants to talk about sanitary products, then why hasn't she noticed that she needs to buy her teenage daughter a pair of pants that fit?"

By 1983, the white bathers had finally arrived. Yep, when you're self conscious, miserable, leaking blood yet retaining fluids, NOTHING says 'I've got my period' like a fun-filled frolic in the sea. Where are the zits on her chin? The sand gathered at the crotch of her bikini bottom? Is the strategically placed wave hiding the fact that the string has escaped and is now dangling out-and-proud along the top of her inner thigh like an albino pubic hair?

I particularly love the awkward grammar of 'Designed by a woman gynaecologist for all the tampon protection you need.' A woman gynaecologist? Shouldn't that have been female? And 'tampon protection?' Do they mean that the tampon is the item that needs to be protected at all costs and it is the swimming chick's vagina that's the only safe place to do it?

So many questions but here's one for the fellas. Did we really, truly, need to see THIS: