Sally Peters

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In the Middle of the Jungle

This is a wild nature story

Well then, dead in the middle of the jungle was an Edwardian town house of three storeys. All around it was concrete. It was about half-a-mile from Chelsea and you couldn't see the rest of London for all the bricks. In the charming bedsit on the top floor was an exotic orchid., blooming away despite the jungle.

You could have swiped us semi-conscious with a gardenia window-box when we met the orchid. She was SALLY PETERS. She had never been in a jungle before, she had come from a quiet country town to work as a secretary in London. The hoots of the taxis were like the roars of lions, but Sally was blooming all the same. Well, she had coped with whistling wolves for years, so roaring lions were no problem.

"I could eat them for breakfast," she said.

The first lion-eating orchid of all time.

Helen Du Bois

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In Regard to Your Insurance

For a premium you’ll think is quite ridiculous (said the insurance man) you can be covered for any kind of personal accident. Every day people fall off ladders, cartwheel down fire escapes, walk into walls—

Yes, yes, that's all very well said HELEN DU BOIS but how ridiculous is quite ridiculous? I have quite a job to keep up with the cost of living as it is. Being a shorthand-typist does not exactly cover me for tripping off to Davos in the winter and Cannes in the summer, and I can't even buy all the clothes I'd like. So how I can afford more insurance, however ridiculous the premium is, I really don't know.

Oh, my dear young lady, I can assure you it would scarcely raise a rattle in your purse. And what you must consider is not whether you can afford it but whether you can’t—

I've already considered that. What I’m considering now is how often I fall off ladders, tumble down fire escapes and walk into walls. Actually, it was very intriguing the other day. The most heavenly man suddenly appeared as I left the boutique and I was so invigorated by his obviously magnetic vitality that I walked straight into him. We parted the best of friends and he sent round a bunch of flowers. I don’t need to be insured against that. Goodbye, Mr. Pinecrust.

Fifi Martine

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But What Will Henri Think?

Ah, said FIFI MARTINE, Paris model, as she modelled the latest ensemble in lingerie a la femme, it is fine for the designers who wish to make the big impact, but what will Henri think?

Henri, of course, is the average Frenchman, of whom the average French girl is passingly fond. They speak the same language for a start.

The designers, said Fifi, say this is what every fashion-conscious Frenchwoman will be wearing at St. Tropez. Ah, it is a point of view most formidable, but it is as well such a fashion is not for the eye because it is so long and I do not think Henri will regard it with the same pleasure as he regards the bikini, no?

Well, you can't deprive any girl of her own opinion and call yourself a democrat. No doubt Fifi suspects the French designers are confused and a little frustrated at the moment, for temporarily they have lost the initiative in the matter of fashion. They don't know whether to ignore Mary Quant or catch up with her. So naturally models like Fifi are becoming confused too. It must be Henri's move.

Elizabeth Gallacher

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Nice To Know

Come here, faceache.

I beg your pardon'!

You heard. Listen, cocky, I saw you.

I daresay you did. I ain't the invisible man.

You will be if I catch you at it again. You been looking at my girl. Yeah, I was thinking what a nice bracelet she was wearing. I’d like to get one just like that for my mother. What's her name, by the way? I’d like to introduce myself.

Oh, you would, would you? Why?

Because I'm six feet one and you're only five feet four. Any other questions? No, none. Sorry I called you faceache. Now I know you better I can see I shouldn't have. If you’d really like to meet her then her name's ELIZABETH GALLACHER and she’s extremely nice to know. And see that guy who’s just bought her a drink? He’s six feet three, he’s her brother, and he’s nice to know too. Come on over.

Pardon me, I got a train to catch, I gotta be in the Isle of Man by midnight.

Penny Leigh

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Penny For Your Thoughts

If you often have wistful dreams about someone tender, affectionate and absolutely ravishing who would make you blissfully happy without having to go off to a desert island, you're probably on an all-male expedition to the icy wastes of Greenland.

One girl you'll almost certainly dream about as soon as you see these pics of her is PENNY LEIGH.

She's ever so ravishing.

She likes riding, swimming and motorbikes. She can ride a motorbike like fun. Want to go pillion with her?

If so, hang on blissfully or you'll fall off.

Maureen Beech

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Adaptability

Most of you know that adaptability and housewifery go hand-in-hand. Take the case of MAUREEN BEECH, for instance. Maureen not only runs a home, she is also a fashion model and the holder of the title " Miss Brighton and Hove Albion 1965.” Besides adaptability, how's that for getting around?

Lisa Scott

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Vintage Year

Year of origin 1945.

That was the year when we all stopped throwing hot lead and sizzling iron at each other and the sexy but militant girls in the Army, Navy and Air Force went happily back to civvy street to forget their militancy and rehabilitate their wriggles.

It was also the year when lovely LISA SCOTT was born. It was a vintage year for babies both beautiful and cuddly. When Charley Grapevine was born the top fell off a mountain somewhere and in the Falkland Islands it rained for six months solid. Charley’s year was non-vintage.

Latterly a secretary, Lisa’s current ambition is to be a successful model, and she’s got a yen for eating candy or washing whiter than white in TV commercials. Well, if we have to have all those soap flakes, let’s have them wrapped around Lisa.

Washing-machines and soap powders are purely utilitarian.

But washing-machines and soap powders and Lisa are delightful. “Mum, come and turn the telly off—dad's temperature’s gone up again.”

Deirdre Vascoe

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Girl of The Future

If you want to keep in touch with the fascinating world of the future, take a look at future-minded DEIRDRE VASCOE.

Deirdre reckons she's just masterminded the simplistic everyday outfit of the future. There'll be no such things as cold temperatures and wet rain to worry about, and girls will just wear boots, futuristic tights and what you might call half a pair of knickers.

Anyone for Mars?

Amanda Case

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Amanda The Unready

Having fought her way home from the office, AMANDA CASE thought she'd take a bath instead of a shower, then sit down refreshed to chicken and asparagus pie.

She ran the bath and was quite unready for what happened next.

She fell in.

She wasn't at all undressed for it.

Just a few buttons undone. Then what?

“I was wet all over," said Amanda, and so was everything else.”

Louise Crawford

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For Want of a Rocker

What was needed by her parents' fireplace, thought LOUISE CRAWFORD, was a nice rocking-chair. Grandpa had had one and gave Louise rides on his knees when she was a little girl.

Louise still has a yen for a rocker, and for want off one by the fireplace she has to sit on that fur rug. All we can say is that if any decoration goes really excitingly with a fireside fur rug, it's Louise.

She looks good whatever she's doing. She plays a smashing game of tennis and a shapely game of basketball. She's not the best of footballers, however, but she looks gorgeous in her short soccer shorts.

Oh, come up to our sports shop sometime, Louise.

"Not unless I'm wearing my shin-pads," said Louise, "I know you”.

Patricia McGregor

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Just Right For A Walk In The Park

The day was fine, PATRICIA McGREGOR was looking beautiful, and everything seemed set fair for a walk in the park.

But first, of course, Pat had to make sure that her seams were straight and her nails were polished.

Not to mention her shoes. A fashion model like Pat just couldn’t be seen in public without a shoeshine.

A final check on those seams—a last suspender adjustment, and we’re all set.

Apart from—no, not just the hat, Pat. What about the skirt? Well, you might get away with it if you keep your coat buttoned up, but suppose you get asked into tea somewhere?

“Hallo! Hallo-Sally? Sally, did I leave my skirt at your place yesterday? I did? Well, good heavens, what did I come home in, then? I did? Gosh, no wonder I thought it was draughty on my bike!”

Christine Dovey

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Bristol Fashion

Bristol fashion means tip-top and shipshape, which is easily interpreted by a sailor but might need clarifying for the benefit of landlubbers.

For the benefit of landlubbers, then, it means spanking.

First-class Shining bright. The tops.

Bristol girl CHRISTINE DOVEY is all of that.

She's a shorthand- typist, has fashion-conscious statistics of 36-23-35. with ambitions to work on the catwalk.

She loves pop and discotheques and fast cars.

There are lots of tip-top, shipshape girls like Christine in Bristol, which is why the fellers there always look so pleased with things.

Sally Dixon

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Kitchen Chores

It's all right for some. Some have au pair girls to use a broom for them.

But SALLY DIXON, university student, has to do ail her own chores in her London fiat and one place she likes to keep spotless is her kitchen, she being a girl who spends a lot of time in it. She's a marvel at making up exotic dishes out of homely ingredients bought at the nearby Street market.

She's also a marvel at modelling in her spare leisure hours, so that she can occasionally buy her-self a luscious steak and cook it Chinese style. You eat it with Chinese crackers.

Sylvia Martin

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Flutterer

No, come on. Tearaway (said the panting jockey), get weaving or you’ll have me in dead trouble with Lady Sylvia. I tipped her you’d win by five lengths and here you are not even trying—swelp me if I don’t nobble you myself next time out. You couldn’t blame the gee-gee, really. The jockey just lost all sense of proportion when he gazed into the green eyes of SYLVIA MARTIN, 20-year-old bachelor-girl-about-town, who loves a flutter on the horses and believes anything a jockey tells her about the nags. Sylvia has lost the equivalent of a shirt more times than she cares to remember.

In case any of you think the height of bliss is only experienced by those riding a rocking-horse on the top of the Eiffel Tower, then there are those among you who haven’t seen Sylvia waving her horse home at Epsom. She dances, jigs, cavorts, yells, shrieks, and generally lets her enthusiasm take such hold of her that she becomes the most entrancing spectacle of the day.

Sorry we couldn’t show you her cheering her last flutter home, but we did catch her looking extremely entrancing in the domestic setting of a London flat.

Sylvia’s ambition, as distinct from her hobby, is the theatre—she wants desperately to break into the real, live genuine circuit—but she won’t put her shirt on it, she couldn’t bear to lose on that one.

Teri Alexander

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How Delightful

She took a course of social psychology last winter and she’s got eyes the colour of the deep green sea, and what with that and the fact that she doesn’t half know how to make the most of a crepe suzette, she’s naturally the girl we’d most like to be psychological with.

Her name, as if that mattered, is TERI ALEXANDER and we’ve fallen down four flights of stairs for girls only half as good-looking. It’s all part of the process of living. If you’re not susceptible to the witchery of women you shouldn’t be here. It hurts, of course, but the dreams are delightful.

Before she joined a fashion, house Teri worked as a secretary. She used to live in Manchester. Now she lives in London.

Swingy, isn’t she?

Who wants to join the Bengal Lancers these days?