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.

Susan Ashford

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What a Worker

In a Scottish fashion house SUSAN ASHFORD puts in a hard, creative day's work every day, and you can't stop her vibrantly attacking all kinds of other jobs at week-ends, either.

Makes us feel fragile, she does. The energy of the girl. And she's only twenty-one.

She keeps her car in her garage at home, and she doesn't only like to keep the car gleaming with polish, she likes to keep the garage spotless too. It's incredible. All those lovely week-ends just made for fun and Susan happy with a broom.

Wearing just the bare essentials, as it were, she goes into action. If we had a bloke come round to do a spot of polishing or cleaning for us, he'd be wearing egg-stained dungarees and turn the place upside-down in minutes. Not Susan. With smooth, curvy efficiency, and looking like a shipwrecked sailor's dream of home, she cleans up the garage in no time at all. Talk about how to make a humdrum job look like a floor show at Dick's Nitery.

Lovely.

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?

Joy Harries

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One of the Joys of Life

The best secretaries today all seem to be raving beauties, and if they'd been part of the scene in Dickens' time he'd have dispensed with Little Nell and filled his books with heroines who had far more vibrations, and who were full of the joys of life.

One of the joys of life today is secretary JOY HARRIES.

Here she is on the seat at the bottom of her garden in Hertfordshire.

We know you'd all like one like Joy at the bottom of your gardens, but supposing suddenly you did have? You'd only go all non-compos mentis and quivery and inarticulate. What the one cool man in a hundred would do would be to bow slightly, extend a hand and say, "Ah, my dear Miss Harries, shall we take tea on the lawn or shall I show you the conservatory?"

Joy would like that. She can take tea or leave it, but she adores conservatories and hot plants.

Liz McEwen

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Parley – Vous Francais?

Oui !

Girl with the engaging smile and a natural flair for looking lovely in white lingerie is LIZ McEWEN.

Liz spent a holiday in France this year. She went with some girlfriends. Naturally, they all wanted to test their French. Liz saw the most ravishing gendarme, lean, long, shatteringly Gallic and absolutely dishy. “When the traffic stops,” she said, “I’ll pop over to him and ask him the way to the Eiffel Tower.” “But we're not going to the Eiffel Tower,” said Shirley,” we went there yesterday.” You can't do anything with a girl as unimaginative as Shirley, so Liz just gave her a look and popped over to ask her dishy gendarme the way to the Eiffel Tower. As soon as the gendarme saw her coming he blew his whistle and all the traffic went into reverse. He bowed when Liz arrived and Liz, in her best French, which is not at all bad, popped the question apropos the location of the Eiffel Tower.

She returned to her friends dreamy-eyed and in an ecstatic tizzy, as they say in all the modern novels. “Well?” said Shirley. “He said it was twenty minutes after eleven,” said Liz tenderly. “Some answer,” said a girl called Daffodil, “he couldn't have understood your French.”

“His name is Maurice,” said Liz,” and when he comes to England he's going to bring me one of those big bunches of onions.”

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.

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.”

Karin Reali

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Excuse Me

Caught with a slipped clip as she prepares to alight from her car is KARIN REALI, West German film starlet, wondering, like so many other girls, why nobody makes a car from which a lady may alight without a leg show.

Jackie Taylor

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Follow the Girls

One can’t help but follow them these days.

Down the Strand, up Regent Street, down the Mall and all the way along the Embankment.

They’re a joy to the eye and one’s feet hardly notice at all, though the big toes don’t half play up when one at last gets home.

Cast an eye upon JACKIE TAYLOR, for instance. One could follow her from Land’s End to Edinburgh Castle and never notice a single blister.

Here she is against London backgrounds, and the whistles could be heard from every window.

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

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?