Nicola Taylor

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Design For A Garden

If you don’t care about your garden and any old design will do, you can fill it with broken furniture and call it what you like. Funny thing is, people might fall over themselves to see it and then go away with the dazed look of those who have just seen the ultimate in horticultural architecture.

But if you care genuinely all you need to obtain to complete a garden design that will fill the beholder with delight is a garden seat containing NICOLA TAYLOR. For our money that’s the ultimate.

Sylvia Stuart

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What’s It All About?

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.

Janet Neill

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The Wedding !

If you were to get an invitation from Janet to dine at your most exclusive local restaurant, you would no doubt, providing you could afford it, be there like a shot.

So too, was our photographer, but he sneaked along to Janet’s place even before she was ready. He’s pretty keen on Janet, if you know what we mean ! What a shock he got though when he found out he’d been invited to the wedding !

Helena Charles

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High in the Sky

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.

Vanda Vane-Dotson

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Whose Side Are You On?

If you must know (said tall, willowy VANDA VANE-DOTSON who prefers riding a country horse to taking a town taxi) I’m on the wrong side and trying hard to ge* to the right side before it’s too late.

In some circumstances (said Vanda, who is our idea of a rural-loving debutante) either side can be the right side. It just so happens that the circumstances on this occasion were all bound up with the fact that there was a rather hefty-looking quadruped on my side and he had all the characteristics of a belligerent bull.

Therefore (said Vanda, who drives a whizz of a sports car with verve and application) I knew there was only one side of the fence I wanted to be and that was the other side. I didn’t actually fall flat on my face but I can’t say these tight mini-dresses give a girl maximum composure when she’s in the kind of hurry I was.

Pamela Gastell

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Is There a Tractor Around?

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.

Ann Carol Keyes

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They Don't Make Them Like This in Tonka

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.

Shirley Epps

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Lively Lovely

SHIRLEY EPPS is a girl who never gets that one-degree-under feeling. She feels lively and looks lovely all year round. Unlike us—we rarely feel lively and never look lovely. Most times we feel horrible and look even worse.

We must admit, however, that meeting a girl like Shirley never fails to make us feel on top of the world. It’s that supersonic brightness she radiates.

At the moment, Shirley’s working hard as a waitress and saving hard for the fare to Corsica, where she intends to live and work for a year or so. Those lucky Corsicans!

Dawn Grayson

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Please Write

When DAWN GRAYSON realises her ambition of doing some modelling overseas, we do hope she’ll write.

You can wave goodbye to some girls and it doesn’t matter if they write or not. They’re not all as beautiful as Dawn. They don’t make you bite your nails half as much as Dawn does.

Leave us if you must, darling, but please write. Otherwise we’ll fall into a saucepan of hot cocoa.

Brigitte Jelinek

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Invite Us Over

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.

Angela Bond

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Its Lovely in Kent

Well, it’s lovely at the time of the year when ANGELA BOND of Devon is visiting in her wire wheeled chariot of fiery red.

It’s even more lovely when you realise Angela is just the girl you’d like to get lost in an orchard with. If you’re fond of apples Angela will fill a barrel for you.

The barrel has to have the right shape of 37-24-36.

Friends

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That’s What Friends Are For

You expect your boss to capitalise on your endeavor and your wife to read any confidential mail you get from Paris.

You don't expect anything except high pressure from insurance salesmen or stabs in the back from business acquaintances.

What makes it all worthwhile is the kindness you get from friends.

That’s what friends are for. To rally around and be kind when you most need them.

For example, when glamorous fashion model INGE PETRASCH was due to meet the most fascinating man from Hamburg her usual hairdresser was up a tall tree in the Black Forest and couldn’t get down. Nobody was aware of this except a large Black Forest wolfhound waiting slaveringly at the foot of the tree. The hound hadn’t had a hairdresser’s leg for ages and was willing to wait a week for this one.

Anyway, Inge couldn’t get fixed up in time with another hairdresser so turned to her friend, KATRIN DORMANN, who has a talent for styling woman’s crowning glory. “But of course,” said Katrin, “I will do it for you, darling. Who is your special date?” Inge told her and Katrin said,” Oh, yes, I know him from his pictures and he is truly ecstatic. Sit down, darling, and I will fix you up fine, you see.”

Eventually Inge was all in curlers and fixed up fine under the dryer with instructions from Katrin not to move until the little bell pinged.

So Inge waited and waited while Katrin, of course, dolled herself up in her most ravishing ensemble and went off to meet the most fascinating man from Hamburg, to whom she explained that Inge was unavoidably prevented from keeping the date and that she, Katrin, was standing-in. That’s what friends are for.

Susan Kane

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Frills

Slim, trim and long-legged, Susan is (we think) the epitome of just what the young man’s fancy primarily dwells upon when he is romantically considering the exhilarating effect of the spring — except that pretty girls like Susan inspire him to poetry not only in the spring but summer, autumn and winter, too.

Here she catches the eye in her frilly petticoats and her gay garters, and if she isn’t just the right advertisement for more and more frills, then who is?

Susan lives in Kent. On the coast, in fact, where she catches the eye occasionally in her check bikini.

Pretty SUSAN KANE, who wears a ribbon in her hair, is a girl with femininity-Plus. She thinks as we do—that men look right in trousers and T-shirts, and girls look more than right in skirts and frills.

Sylvia Martin

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Where’s The Moulin Rouge

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.

Laura St.John

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Three-Way Chat

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.