Joanna Carlton

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Back To The Blackboard

It was just one of those days. JOANNA CARLTON went out shopping and came back with the wrong change. It could happen to anybody, and it certainly happened to Joanna, a Nottingham housewife.

“Yes, I know,” said Mr. Carlton, “but it happened last Christmas as well. Back to the blackboard for you, dear wife, and we'll start with practical mathematics and end with trigonometry, and though it'll hurt me more than it’ll hurt you we’ll both feel all the better for it.” “I don’t think it will make me feel better at all,” said Joanna. “Can't I just go out to knitting classes?"

“Back to the blackboard,” said hubby and back to the blackboard it was, and Joanna started with how many beans make five and what happens when you buy seven oranges and give a quarter of them to that nice bus conductor on the way home.

Then she went on to practical mathematics and wished fervently she'd stayed with the five beans and seven oranges, because she was never very good at any kind of mathematics and likes just being a happy housewife and a good cook and a great help to her husband when he's having trouble mending a fuse.

“What,” said hubby, “is the distance between A and C?”

“Five and a half oranges,” said Joanna.

Never mind, it was a gallant try and she felt all the better for it, even if he didn’t.

Helen Baxter

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Anyone Looking

It’s a bit of a problem when you want to change your dress in the back of a car, for there’s always the possibility that some knickerbockered bird watcher may be looking or so thought HELEN BAXTER.

And when you have changed, isn’t it just absolutely ridiculous to find your dress caught up in the car door and that tweedy-headed B.W. twittering at you over the hedge

Anne Scott

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Cooling Off

"I don’t usually appear out-of-doors like an absent-minded professor," said ANNE SCOTT.

"What brand of absent-mindedness did you have in mind?"

"Oh, you know." A bit of a giggle here. “The ones who leave for work minus their trousers. I didn’t leave home minus my dress, I assure you. It’s the weather."

"What weather?"

"All this gorgeous hot stuff. I didn’t think there was any left."

"Oh, come now, Miss Scott, weather has always been a matter of the four seasons."

"Do you have to talk like some diddly-fiddly old dodderer from the Ministry? I’m only trying very simply to explain why I look like this."

"No explanation necessary. Miss Scott. It’s all a very natural development process singularly special to lovely young ladies, and there’s no one it pleases more than an old dodderer from the Ministry."

“There’s no need to make all that much of it. It just happened to get a lot hotter than I expected, so I thought I’d do some cooling off."

"Pardon us while we go jump in the lake. It’s the only way to get our temperature down.”

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.”

Maggie McCully

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A Work of Art

A work of art more often than not is something they put on a pedestal or hang on a wall and is frequently called a museum piece. There’s the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo and MAGGIE McCULLY, only don’t try hanging Maggie on a wall, even at a Bond Street gallery, or you’ll find yourself in a six-foot frame and with a bump on your head that’ll fit a half-pint skid-lid.

Of course, if you’re a lover of art and subject to fragilistic trembling’s in the presence of the Mona Lisa or the Venus de Milo, you won’t be without palpitations in the presence of Maggie, either. As the epitome of all that is inspiring about the modern girl,

Maggie is even better than a work of art.

She lives and breathes and loves a sleigh ride.

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!”

Susan Anstey

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Outlook Lovely

Yes, it's very lovely for the art students around Bristol. Their new teacher is SUSAN ANSTEY, who is considered an incomparable work of art herself.

Long-legged, vivacious and with flowing chestnut hair, Susan took the opportunity during vacation time to show that modern lady teachers aren't just intellectual faces. She did some delicious pin-up modelling and was quite overcome at the pocket money she earned.

"My word," she said, "teachers don't get paid half as much."

"Well, give it up, wonder woman," said the photographer, "and be a glamour girl."

"I'd like to," said Susan, "but I'm dedicated and my pupils would miss me awfully."

"If I were in your class," he said, "so would I."

Jane Dixon

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Oh, Those Irish Eyes

Some Irish housewives have got a lovely way of frying bacon; others have the most bewitching way of looking all cuddly.

We know a very bewitching Irish housewife. She's JANE DIXON.

Her way of bewitching a feller is to flash her Irish eyes at him. Irish eyes are soft, limpid, saucy and provoking. You can write poetry about them and get ten marks out ten from teacher for same.

You can certainly write poetry about Jane, and don't be put off by her trendy see-through. Keep looking into her eyes until you go all glazed and then you'll be in the mood to write the dreamiest poetry ever.

It doesn't have to rhyme; it just has to have a lilting flow.

Marie Fitzgerald

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Delightful Dolly

Hampshire secretary MARIE FITZGERALD loves all the mini fashions and lace-up boots.

We love all the mini fashions too, and go overboard for secretaries in lace-up boots. With all the worries, we’ve got about the bomb, Vietnam and Rhodesia we need such diversification as the sight of mini dollies tripping lightly past our windows. We can’t spend all our time mentally agonising over the stupidity of so many.

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.

Rosanne Stuart

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In A Scottish Garden

Frustrated geography, what you miss being on the wrong side of the border.

All that lovely Scottish heather and all those bonny birds are not the daily delight of those whose eyes are bounded by Portobello Road. As you dally on the kerbside looking for a bargain in old Victoriana, how you must wish you were in a Scottish garden with ROSANNE STUART.

If you don’t wish that, then old Victoriana has got a neurotic hold on you and you'll only cure yourself by butting sandbags. Wait until it leaves off and then give yourself another twenty-four hours to clear your head of ringing noises.

You’re cured. You begin to think of a Scottish garden adorned by sweet Rosanne.

Soon you can think of nothing else. You’re all neurotic again.

You return to that heap of sandbags.

Life for people with complexes is all butt.

Maria Lynley

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Happy Housewives

For all the X-minus fellers who don't have a housewife of their own, our sympathy is unqualified.

They're missing all that is loveliest in life.

We know the most attractive Leicester housewife. She's not only glamorous, she can't half cook too. Her name is MARIA LYNLEY and the man in her life is so appreciative of his good luck he sends her picture postcards when they're on holiday together.

Some men prefer to have model train sets. Mr. Lynley prefers to have Maria. What an acquisition.

Jo Fowler

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It Had To Happen

It always does. Happily humming to herself, JO FOWLER set about finding a place for a picture in her husband's new residence in France, where he now works. You can see what happened. It always does.

Leslie Langham

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The Problem of a Mini

I'm LESLIE LANGHAM.

I live in North London, it’s rather super there and some of the boys are awfully good at Whistling. I suppose they’re training to be football referees. I have a most interesting job. I’m a demonstrator of office equipment. That’s where I find a mini-skirt has its problems. Whenever I’m demonstrating a desk with self-locking keyholes, I seem to be all legs. I’m always saying, “Oh, pardon me,’’ and adjusting my skirt, but everyone is awfully sweet and office managers never seem to mind a bit.

I have to be with it, of course. I can’t not wear a mini, it would be an unbearable drag to dress in trousers, but sometimes I’m not sure if office managers are paying proper attention to my demonstration of an electric typewriter.

It’s very flattering, I must say.