There’s nothing about a typewriter that isn’t familiar to SYLVIA MARTIN, for Sylvia has seen many of her friends tapping away on one. So, she bought one. She had an idea for the most fabulous novel. All about a girl who finds a formula for turning uranium into gold. So, while the idea was hot she began tapping. And you can see what froze the idea eventually. It was the backache she got. Isn’t she a doll?
Around the fascinating street markets of London wander the seekers after the old and the ancient.
Among those with a keen eye for the genuine is MOLLY SHANNON. Whenever Molly can spare time from her job as a shorthand-typist she pops into the market throngs. Actually, Molly stands out in a throng. So, do most blue-eyed blondes with vitalistics of 36-24-37.
At seventeen she's already an expert on antique rings. She collects them and has bought the most fascinating ones for a song. So if you're dying to ingratiate yourself with her, and you'd be a hopeless case of fragility if you weren't, you couldn’t do better than give her a ring.
It has to be a ring of antique splendour, of course. Don't try and foist a fake on her. She'll never wear it.
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.
It was only a small dog, said ELIZABETH GALLACHER, but so adorable and I didn't know he wasn't with me until I got home with an empty lead.
No, it's difficult to describe him, sergeant, and he's hardly got any tail to speak of. And you can’t see his nose. But he does the cutest tricks if you offer him a bowl of redcurrant jelly. Yes, I know it's not the time of the year for fresh red currants but if you’ve got any frozen ones in the station freezer.
Yes, all right, sergeant, you are a dear. We call him Trixie. Well, someone said he was a girl when we first bought him and he was only about as big as a currant bun. So we called him Trixie but he answers to Trix and if you whistle like a squeaky cork coming out of a tight bottle he’ll answer to that as well.
He's black and white. Well, not all over. He’s a bit brown in front. He sits in the window and gets his face tanned.
Thoroughbred What’s that’ He's just a dog. He’s got four legs and all his teeth if that's what you mean. He likes pink slips. No, ladies’. If your wife has got one she doesn't t want.
Thank you, sergeant, you are a pet. You’re a real Trixie.
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.
You can say that about all kinds of things, like the latest detergent that washes frighteningly white—
“Here, watch it, birdbrain, you look like a ghost.” You can say that the ride from Marble Arch to Haywards Heath was pretty good, except that it was a pity about the traffic. You can say that Joe’s Pull-Up for hungry tramps Is pretty good, except watch out for his chips. You can say mum’s pretty good and the job’s pretty good.
And you can really say that SHEILA CAMPBELL is pretty good. Sheila is pretty and good. She’s eighteen, she’s delightful, she’s Scottish, and this Is her first time before the camera as a Highland pin-up. She’s got a thing about pop music—who hasn’t? —and a thing about going to Majorca for holidays. What we like uncommonly well about her, however, is that she thinks men are just super-duper great.
We’re probably not that good.
Now that winter is here the girls are going in for all kinds of bizarre garments.
A bizarre garment is a garment designed to keep a girl looking kooky and feeling warm. Fashions are at their kookiest at the moment, as you know, what with feather boars and hats like the cowboy’s wear.
Amongst the kookiest girls it's the silly season.
SUSAN DOUGLAS, who is among the most elegant and well-dressed models we know, is also among those who go in for long pants—these are indeed very kooky but marvellously warm.
You can't take umbrage at the dears when they make life so exciting for us. You can always look forward to the time when the silly season is over and they've exchanged their feather boars for parasols and their long pants for bars of chocolate.
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.
One day a family moved into the empty house across the street from Percy, and from then on Percy spent his time peeping through his letter-box to see what he could see of the young lady there.
Her name was CRYSTALL DAWSON, and as far as Percy was concerned, she was the cutest-looking girl who’d ever lived opposite, and after five minutes he was nuts about her. Then his mother caught up with him and yanked him into the back room.
“ Aw, mum,” said Percy (who was thirteen and growing fast), “ be a sport, mum. Lemme have another dekko, mum.”
“ Percy,” said his mum, “ I have enough trouble with your father’s weakness for a pretty face. I’m not having the same trouble with you.”
Oblivious of her young admirer opposite, Crystall was getting the house in order and waiting for the rest of her clothes to arrive.
Crystall’s a typist, but would rather be a fashion model. Percy, a deadhead on careers, just thought she was a smasher.
Crystall is 5' 4", and measures 36"-24"-36". Figures to Percy just mean homework. Homework? There’s a clue there somewhere!
Tea is served and even coffee-drinkers can’t resist this!
Finally, of course, there's the afternoon must for every girl, irrespective of age or measurements — a nice cuppa.
Three lumps, please.
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.
Keeping the fireside looking a lot more attractive than if she weren’t there is dark-eyed JEAN BELVIN.
The usual fireside adornment, apart from the tongs and the toasting fork, is a fat cat or a plump Pekinese. While we’re not prepared to make an issue of this with animal-lovers, the preference most people would have would favour Jean, and the cat would have to make do inside the coal-scuttle.
Removal of the plump Pekinese might be a little more difficult. You might even get bitten. But if you want to make room for an adornment as pretty as Jean muzzle the pup before you grab him.
In case you didn’t know, Jean is a receptionist who looks extremely chic in frilly black nylon. We know there's no connection, but we just thought we’d mention it. Ambition is to be a model pin-up!
Jean figures that her measurements of 36"-24"-36" keep her looking slick—and they don't give her any worry about what not to eat.
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.
Purely a rhetorical question. Everyone knows it’s in Paris. SYLVIA MARTIN is just illustrating what an absolute must she is for the front line of the Moulin Rouge Can-Can, though Sylvia’s undeviating ambition is for drama and she burns to be histrionic rather than eye-catching. She prefers Pinter to panto.
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.
