Club Foyer>Chillout Room>Depositions
My experience, like so many others, begins in childhood.
I'm 42 now so I'm going back a fair way but it would be true to say that my very earliest memory surrounds a mac. I don't know how old I was but I can remember my Mother wearing hers and sitting me on the bottom stair while she put me into a green coat of sorts to go out.
It's safe to say that I was less than three when this happened because I have other more vivid memories from when I was that age that I will expand upon in a moment.
The mac she was wearing that day stayed with her until I was six. It is a testament to traditional macs to say that, if the coat was still available to wear, I could throw it to you on a wet day now and you could wear it without it looking dated. Here we had a perfectly ordinary cream coloured raincoat with those buttons that look like they are made from hide. You know the sort. They featured lots of different shades of beige, cream and brown, with no regular pattern to their colours. Burberry trenchcoats usually have buttons like it. I'm pretty sure that the coat was single breasted and may have had concealed buttons when done up. It certainly had those little strappy things on the cuffs - but rather than having belt buckles on them they had one button for each sleeve to hold them there. Mum wore this coat most ofthe time when she was outside until I was six.
Really cold weather made her produce the tweed overcoat instead. To prove that stuff comes back into fashion, you could have worn that this last winter too. It was several different shades of blue, and single-breasted with three big blue buttons to do up. The blue tweed disappeared during childhood.
Over a period of time a Burgundy coloured trench and a grey one appeared (both leather but no less fun for it). Mum bought one and was given the other both in 1971. There were a series of beige trenchcoats and (eventually) her spectacular single breasted tan-coloured one. The Burgundy, grey and tan coloured coats still exist now.
Even though my love extends to all coats, I get particularly excited by trenchcoat-style macs. I just love them. I find that ladies who are 'extremely attractive' simply aren't for me unless they've got a raincoat in the right style. And 'less attractive' ladies often get my vote if they are buttoned and belted into a trench. The common fantasy for men is taking a lady's clothes off - I fantasise about fastening a raincoat instead. In fact I get quite angry inside if! see a lady in a trenchcoat and she hasn't fastened it properly. What a waste!
Once again like so many of your writers, I got (and still get) excited by coat fragrances too.
Macs are best for me in this area as well, but I'm luckier than some of your correspondents, because I've yet to find a coat whose fragrance I don't like. A full bus on a wet day is a happy place for me. There's something about lots of soaked individuals in wet coats coming and going in an enclosed space. Mmmmmmmm! I have happy memories of a Gannex mac from my childhood. If you read on you'll hear me pouring my heart out about it.
The reason I was able to say that I was under three with my above first memory, is that by the time I was this age I had a brown coat instead of the green one. Almost 40 years later I can still smell (with my mind's nose!) its own particular fragrance. I've never had another that smelt the same since, either in childhood or adulthood.
To most people it was a brown anorak. An inanimate object. Not in my life though! I can remember that it had a brown furry lining that was very snug and warm. It also had a hood that fastened under the chin with strings. The zip had a trademark on it that I subsequently discovered was quite common in the late 1960's and eady 1970's.
If you put a coat on and fasten the zip you will find that at the very bottom of what you have fastened is a square bit of metal. Ultimately this bit holds together the two parts of zip that you have joined. The square bit of metal on my coat had a circle embossed in its middle.
The other notable thing about the anorak's zip was the (normally) straight piece at the bottom that you poke into the bit that accepts it on the other side. I don't know the official name for this. If you don't know what I mean then put on a coat with a zip and take the piece in your right hand (if you are a man) at the bottom of the zip that you would use to fasten it. It is this piece that you poke into the left side before pulling the zip up that I am referring to. On most coats nowadays this right hand piece is a straight up and down, vertical chunk of metal. If you look at zips on coats in the shops you may find that some of these pieces are slightly curved though. On my brown coat it was particularly curved. I later learned that all coats with the circle embossed on the square piece at the bottom had really curved bits of metal to use in the zip's joining process too. - Sorry for all the technicalities(!), but I can't think of a better way of explaining things. And it's really important, as the rest of the letter will reveal.
I don't have children so I've no idea at what age they start being able to fasten their own coats. I do know that I couldn't manage the brown one when I was three though. I still couldn't do it when I was well over four which is when it got replaced. Whenever we went out Mum would have her mac on or occasionally the blue tvveed affair at that stage. I have vivid memories of trying to be independent by zipping up the brown coat. Frustratingly though, the nasty curved bit ofmetal would never locate in the bit that is supposed to accept it on the other side of the coat. It would go through the top bit of the part ofthe zip that should collect it and then follow its own curve, out sideways rather than into the bottom of the acceptor. After this had happened it was very tricky to pull it out again and have another go. As we were always in a rush there would always be the inevitable whoosh of Mum's coat sleeve towards my anorak's zip and she would take over often bashing my hands out of the way, before reaching up to pull the hood over my head for me. Ooooh. What a fragrance that was!
She would tie the strings - the first of a sequence of lovely noises. The buttons on her cuffs were right under my nose at this point. Then she would quickly crouch down in front of me, her mac positively singing as she dropped. She used to take hold ofthe zip, very forcibly while it was still improperly joined, before pulling it out -hard! I would hear a loud "thud" in my ears amplified up through the coat and its hood. Having got the two bits of zip apart she would grab them again - if I looked down I could see that each of the two sides of the zip would be grasped between a thumb and forefinger . She would pull both sides towards the floor and then hold everything still for about a second. It was like someone was saying "Ready...... Steady....".
And while she held the zip there I would start to get a beautiful feeling. I didn't know what it was. I just felt lovely and tingly inside. I was aware of this for the very first time in my life in the brown coat when I was three.
This magical feeling would continue as she would pull both sides of the coat hard towards the floor again. This evoked two more loud "thuds" in my ears. Then she would begin fastening the zip. Her fumblings sent clicks and clunks through the hood and into my ears.
At this stage the lovely tingling sensation reached an altogether new extreme.
Then, eventually, she would get the two sides joined. She would pull the zip up to my chin. And the tingling would subside.
Obviously my Mum did most of the fastening of my coat then, but I can clearly remember my thirteen-year-old sister fastening me up too. She was normally on those occasions dressed in her school gaberdine trenchcoat - which was bottle green. Like Mum, she gave me magical feelings too - but in both whichever did did it, the magical feelings were feelings I hated at the same time! Over a period it became clear that anyone would have this effect, and it became all the stronger when they were wearing a coat when they chose to tackle the art of fastening mine for me. When they wore a trench it was best of all...
Question 1 then: Have you or any of your other coat loving folks had the same tingling experience when a mac wearer has put them into a coat? [See Andy -L]
Back to 1966. I have explained that I received the lovely sensation when I had my coat fastened. I'm not going to type what actually happened anatomically because I want my story to be published. It was simply my first memory of something really pleasant of a physical type. Read into that what you will. I have read elsewhere that it is perfectly normal for this to happen to a little boy as a response to something a mother or big sister does when he is still small.
What is really strange though is that I grew to dread the moment. I knew that when we were going out I would have to have my coat fastened and I knew what was going to happen to me. I had no idea what was going on and I went through mental torment when it was announced that we would be going out - unless it was a blazing hot day when I knew no coats would be implicated! So we have a strange scenario when something lovely was going to happen to me and I dreaded it happening. Stranger still, when "the fastener" had a trenchcoat on it would be best of all -and most dreaded.
So I would stand in our hall and try so very very hard to fasten my coat before anyone could intervene, particularly if the grown-ups were in their macs. I grew to wish that people would just give me a chance to have a few swipes at the blessed zip instead of intervening so soon. I grew out of the coat before I'd mastered the curved bit of zip at the bottom.
I should conclude this section by saying that it often gave the adults trouble too, which led to more fumbling with it, more tingling - and more torment. I had managed to identify the curved bit of zip as my problem. My friend Peter from playschool had a blue anorak with a straight piece of zip to put in. When we were outside one day, it suddenly started raining. I wanted to know in could do up a "straight bit" so I looked hard at him. "Can't you fasten that?'
"No."
"Come here and stand still." I put his hood up and did to him what my Mother did to me. I joined the two pieces of zip easily. He wriggled and pulled it out though. I told him how naughty he was and put the zip in again easily once more and pulled it up. Nobody noticed mine was undone. And I had discovered that I could fasten a zip with "a straight piece" - a considerable relief.
Question 2: Why did he wriggle and pull the zip out? Was he as uncomfortable as me with being zipped up? I suppose we'll never know will we?
To be continued ...
Colin
Absolutely fascinating! Sorry it's taken a lifetime to put up - I've only just got my text-reading software working again after a switch to Vista...with crucial drivers just not available. Anyway first installment mounted at last.
Anyway, I wonder if yours is not a driver issue? Only the opposite of mine. I can't get a driver for an old printer - I think you must have a driver for a yet-to-be released human being. They have clearly found a way of attaching pleasure to the most unlikely functions. Genius! A really wonderful breakthrough for the next generation. And what a terrfic surprise that even some (relatively!) older machines can work with the new software! You are a very lucky person.
Thanks so much for writing. I have the rest of your document to put up next time.
Lorraine
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