They were waiting for their passports to be stamped, CAROL ANN LEDSAM and SANDRA MORRIS. A woman poked her head out and said, "Get undressed.” The girls thought it a bit odd to get undressed for passport-stamping, but helped each other until they both looked very chic in their undies. And then they found they were on the wrong floor, and they were nearly pulled into a sauna bath instead of receiving their passports.
Secretary SYLVIA STUART thought about going to the local fancy dress gala as a bird of the fifties. Well, her mum kept lots of well-preserved garments of that era in an old family chest, and Sylvia thought she could be utterly authentic if she borrowed some of them.
There was a recognisable bra—somewhat more to it than today's bras but a bra all the same—and there were also some quite wearable pairs of knicks.
"But, oh confusion," said Sylvia, when she put mum's old leg hose on, "how did mum keep them up? What's this, then?"
It was a genuine 1950 garter-belt, an utter mystery to Sylvia, who said she didn't know if it had to be worn around the neck or what. Mum came up and laughed her head off and then explained the intricacies.
Eventually, Sylvia looked lovely and old-fashioned, with everything properly done up and staying up.
In a penthouse flat in Ladbroke Grove, London, dwells one of the most popular girls as far as the balloon fanatics are concerned. We're talking about secretary HELENA CHARLES and what she looks like on a summer evening.
On a summer evening, you see, Helena sunbathes outside her penthouse. Her penthouse is much higher than the surrounding buildings and nobody can overlook her without using a fifty-foot periscope. Except the mad balloonists, who can sail to and fro with basket-swinging impunity and look down on Helena's form divine.
There's one feller in goggles and moustache who nearly swept her up and carried her off, and her without a stitch, by Venus. But at a critical moment his balloon fouled a television aerial and went pop. He sagged down into the street and Helena remained blithely untrammelled, if you know what we mean.
Dancer ANNABEL LANE has another passion besides choreography.
It's chess.
She's got lots of chess mates and can whack them all by concentrated dedication. One high-domed egghead who rather fancied himself got checkmated in six moves. When asked what it felt like to be annihilated he replied, "Dreamy, my dear—what a brain she's got to go with her measurements."
Annabel's measurements are all curvy.
Willy Carmuckle, known locally as the village half-pint—he's only five feet four—looked around to see if there was a tractor in sight. He thought if he could find one and drive it around the cornfield in ever-increasing circles, it would take his mind off the distracting beauty of PAMELA GASTELL.
"You couldn't manage a tractor even if you found one," said his friend, who was more blase about beauty. (He worked in a lingerie factory).
"I could manage it better than I could manage Miss Gastell, she’s too blooming pom-pom for me," said Willy.
"What's pom-pom?"
"She makes my ears go ping," said Willy.
That's the trouble with only being five feet four. Pamela is five feet five and lives in Brighton. During sunny week-ends she rides over the Downs on her horse, and sometimes she gets off her horse and looks all picturesque, as she does here.
Would you like to live in Sussex and meet up occasionally with Pamela?
As a matter of fact, said Bighead, l’d like to live in Sussex and meet up frequently with her.
So would we.
Not just a pretty face is BARBARA MARTIN from Pudsey in Yorkshire. She's married to a feller who calls her his wonder girl.
In addition to keeping the house lovely to come home to, Barbara is a fine cook, an advertising and fashion model, a Yoga enthusiast and a dab hand at painting.
And if that's not enough she has a curvy figure measuring 37-24-36 and can fill a bikini perfectly.
Where's Tonka?
Oh, somewhere in the heart of undiscovered waters a thousand miles from the Great Barrier Reef. Nothing to do with Tonga, just a place on its own. They don't make anything there except coconut-fibre sarongs, and they aren't half itchy.
And they certainly don't make mini-skirted dollies like ANN CAROL KEYES. Ann is so photogenic, what with her dishy suspenders and all, that masculine eyeballs get sort of struck rigid. Mint-flavoured custard is the only cure. Tastes awful but what other antidote is there?
Ann, a young and healthy picture of glamour, has no impossible ambitions. She's just looking forward to having a husband, home and babies in time. Lovely.
In the stockroom of a Manchester cotton mill the girl in charge was STEPHANIE PETERS, and blokes kept coming in to ask her to check what was in the upper bays so that they could see what she looked like in her mini on a ladder.
Such blokes were always milling around in the stockroom and Stevie, as they call her, always seemed to be up the ladder.
So, she thought she'd leave her job and get one in London. Going up and down that ladder was killing her. In London she met some photographers and became a model. Now they're all milling around her in the big city.
Who are?
A bevy of blokes with a long ladder.
Air stewardess KIM SCOTT is what you call a flying swinger. She's up, up and away week after week from London Airport, and all her passengers consider her the most swinging stewardess they ever clapped their international eyes on.
Kim lives in Middlesex and in between her flights comes down to earth to enjoy the peace and quiet of life.
She says that's what a girl needs to do after flying all over the place, otherwise you can fall apart.
Kim with her long legs is still a devotee of the mini and if you can think of anything which would make her look lovelier when she's out shopping for antiques, keep it to yourself. It's bound to be something she couldn't wear without collecting a crowd.
We have our moments when it's not all light and joy, you know. We too have to clean the car and fill up cracks in the ceiling. We too are sitting on the bomb. Ah, poor old people of the seventies, wondering if they'll live to be ninety.
At such moments, we think about the scintillating conversational gambits of BRIGITTE JELINEK, who has the most entertaining way of starting a really cracking argument about the lost tribes of Asia. We never knew any of them ever got lost.
Anyway, in moments of gloom Brigitte couldn't do more for us than invite us over so that we could become intensely involved in a discussion on who actually shot the arrow which laid poor old Harold low at Hastings.
There's nothing so enlivening as a fluent chat with someone as delightful as Miss Jelinek.
Housewife LAURA ST. JOHN was on the phone ordering some groceries when some burk managed to cross the line and Laura found herself talking to the grocer and the burk at the same time.
The burk was trying to sell insurance and Laura ended up with a pound of bacon and a dozen eggs covered against dying of heart failure while in the frying-pan.
The premium was a tin of mustard a month.
It's fun being married. JOANNE MARTIN says you needn't take too much notice of those odd people who tell you it's kaput, she says they don't know what it's all about, they're too busy going in and out of foggy hallucinations.
To be vitally interesting to your husband, says Joanne, you need first of all to look lovely to come home to, so that when he comes into the kitchen to see what's cooking he can't help thinking he'd like to eat you yourself.
Joanne, with her long, honey-blonde hair and her undeniable curves, is indeed a dish. She makes marriage lots and lots of fun, and sometimes in the evenings the television isn't an absolute social necessity at all.
Remember, says Joanne, that when hubby says, "Let's switch this rubbish off and play poker," you've proved you know how to be vitally interesting.
Then what?
"Then you need good cards, "says Joanne, "or you're in for a yell of a time "
In the days when the West was won, it used to be boots and saddles and the sound of the bugles as the U.S. Cavalry came charging up to save the pioneers from being skewered to their waggon wheels by flaming arrows of fire or something.
That's all gone now. The pioneers have all struck oil and the Red Indians are doing their own thing, which is watching Geronimo on the telly.
Today for boots and saddles you can read boots and minis.
SANDRA MORRELL, winner of beauty contests, is all for boots and minis.
We're all for Sandra, she can look scintillating just lounging about.
HELENE GIBBS, arrived in London some several months ago. She didn't expect to make her fortune overnight, but did hope she'd be able to earn enough lolly to pay the rent of her little flat in Camden Town and keep her in food and clothing.
A dancer, Helene thought London's theatres and night clubs wouldn't actually be short of scintillating exponents of this art, and it was with surprise and delight that she found her talents accepted.
Now she's dancing nightly in cabaret. The lolly is lovely, so are the audiences.
At five feet six, with measurements of 37-24-36, Helene is lovely too, especially when photographed in the environs of leafy Hampstead.
One of the leading lights of London at the moment is HELEN JONES. She's a genuine swinger. Wherever there's something going on that's at all worthwhile, you can bet your psychedelic pink shirt that Helen will be conspicuously ravishing.
She's a model with a big London agency and appeared in the film 'Love Variations'. That was a genuine swinger too.
Helen is twenty-one, lives in North London and is a music lover. She adores both classical and underground music.
Underground? You mean on a tube train?
"Great tombstones," said Helen "how long have you been dead?"
That, of course, proves that if you don't speak the language of the swingers you might as well spend your time in museums.
Ah well, you can always sort out a nice, sympathetic mummy to talk to.
