Dear Lorraine

The power of the Internet! Your website might just be paving the way to something fantastic for two mac lovers. I recently introduced my childhood sweetheart to your rainwear club. He wrote to you. I've read his account and feel even more frustrated than I did before. Why? Because he appears to love me about as much as I love him. I'm not sure either of us can, or should do anything about it though.

How much do we love each other ?? Rather a lot I think.

I'm referring to your story which appears under Le Blog. It's a story about Andy and Sarah. Andy wrote it.

Well, I am Sarah.

So I'd better give you my side of this story and if you think that it reads half as well as his, I'll be delighted.

I knew Andy was fond of me in my mac but I certainly didn't realise just how deeply he felt about this until I read what he'd written. It was because of his fondness for me in my raincoat that I told him of your website - at the school reunion he mentions. He may have deliberately poured his heart out, thinking you might publish it and I might read it, or he may have done it without a thought for me. I don't know. Either way we make a good story the way he writes it and every last thing he has identified is true. Anyway here's my version of events.

It was June 1977. Wimbledon was on the TV. Not a great summer, particularly considering the one that went before, but this was a hot day. The tennis people were busy telling us that this was the turning point and that the rest of the summer would be like the previous one.

Within half an hour the thunder was cracking and the lightning was flashing outside our house. My older sister came home from work. She had a new coat on. You guessed it. A brown single breasted mac as per Andy's description, with a fake fur collar. Fake fur? Ugh! Or so it should have been. Actually though I couldn't help liking this coat. Sue unbuttoned her sodden new garment and tossed it over the banisters. I asked her where she'd got it from and why. A shop in Beckenham apparently, near the railway station. She had seen the early signs of the storm approaching as she left the train. She figured she might just get soaked on the mile long walk home. She needed a new coat as her old one had seen better days. She'd been moaning about this for weeks. She had just been paid. Apparently the brown mac was on a dummy in the shop window. She went in, found a size 12 and bought it on impulse. She proceeded to tell me that she wasn't at all sure that she liked it. She put it in her wardrobe and it rarely saw the light of day again. This is a pity. She was a very pretty blonde 19 year old who would have turned even more heads had she worn it I'm sure!

Our Dad came home from work. We were respectable - apparently. He was the Assistant Manager of a Bank. He sat down for tea.

"We're moving. To Gloucestershire."

What?? How could he?? I was 14. I had my friends. I loved school. Why would he want to uproot us ?

It's like this. When the Assistant Manager got offered a Manager's job, he would go wherever he was told. My Dad was told Gloucestershire, so we'd go. That was that. I felt deflated. I went to my room and cried - big tears! My sister came in to comfort me, hearing the sobs. She had her mac back on and was going to meet her boyfriend. The soft material was comforting as she put her arm round me. I wanted one of those and I DID NOT want to go to Gloucestershire.

My sister was single minded and refused to move. Why should she give up her own job because our Dad was being promoted? There was a lot of trouble about this in the house. She was told she couldn't afford to rent and had to come with us. She could get another menial job in Gloucestershire apparently - and Andy thought his parents treated him badly? No. Its just one more synergy that the two of us have - but I don't think he even knew, or knows now about the similarities between the ways our parents treated us.

One of the ladies at the company where my sister worked found her in tears too - the very next day. She took her in, rent free, and my sister (and her lovely brown mac) stayed in London as a result. My Mum and Dad and I went to Gloucestershire. My parents had put the house on the market within a few days and sold it - straightaway. Just my luck! They bought a new house and we had the most seamless move possible.

All my adult experiences of moving house have been horribly stressful. I can't, believe how lucky they got to this day. It was all done and we'd moved within 8 weeks.

A large proportion of the period when the move was going through was covered by the summer holidays at school. I was at home alone a lot during the day, bored. One day I tried on my sister's mac as I liked it so much. I got it buttoned and belted and was enjoying myself surveying my developing figure in the mirror. With the buttons fastened and the belt pulled tightly (buckle in the very tightest hole - and how I wish I could still manage that !) this figure was an absolute pride and joy for me. I was growing up. Young girl? No. YOUNG LADY!! I minced about in the hall. Then. Oh no. I heard a key turning in the lock on the front door behind me. Before I could budge the belt, or undo a button, or even scarper upstairs, my sister walked through the door. She had been sent home from work due to a particularly spectacular vomiting session that had come over her. I just stood there rooted to the spot.

"Why are you wearing my coat?" she demanded - angrily.

"I was, er, just going to the shop for some sweets and I wondered what it felt like."

She went on to ask me why I hadn't put my shoes on first. This was a good question. Shoes always go on before a coat don't they? I can't remember what excuse I used but I got away with it, put my shoes on and borrowed her mac to go to the local shop. Nothing more was said.

We moved to Gloucestershire. I went to the new school. Life was a bit difficult there. I found myself trying to disguise my London accent as this was the source of much taunting from some of the other girls. At least there was no physical bullying.

There was a boy called Andy in the class. He was receiving both verbal and physical abuse from the other boys. I instantly felt sorry for him but decided to distance myself from him. To make a friend of him would not have helped my own cause at this time. Despite this I admired him from afar for the way he handled the bullying. I tried to copy his resilient tactics where my own "bullying" was concerned - with some success.

At Christmas in 1978 my sister came to stay with us. She came in wearing a new double-breasted cream raincoat with the brown one over her arm. She told me that since I liked it so much, I could have it. So Andy was wrong. It arrived in the Christmas holidays, but it wasn't a Christmas present in the strictest sense of the word - and it wasn't new either. Oddly enough a lot of the other more confident girls in the class (the bullies!) were wearing macs in the same style through choice. Aha. Acceptance at last perhaps?

I was very aware of the fact that my figure was reaching full development - and rather keen to show off about this. This mac's style really helped to achieve that. I loved the way it clung to me when it was buttoned up. I still enjoy this now too, about that coat and others in my collection that do the same.

I recently bought a Parka with a furry hood. Do you know anyone that hasn't got one of these at the moment? Its almost like late 2003 and early 2004 has led to all women between about 15 and 40 being issued with one by the government. Mine is of the long style, reaching the knees. The zip starts right down there too and zips all the way up to the top so that you can enclose yourself in the hood. I love this and you have other correspondents who do too. Like Andy, I feel vindicated by some of the content on your website. This Snorkel Parka fascination (or should it be fasten ation - groan!) is another great example of that.

I discovered something else of interest about this particular Parka which may interest other coat anoraks - no pun intended here either Lorraine. The zip is the other way round to normal. The part that pokes in is on the left as you look down from within the coat. It's normally the other way round. I noticed this as soon as I tried it on in the shop as it felt less than natural when I was fastening it. I pointed it out to the shop assistant and she told me that this was because the coat was American. Apparently all American zips are that way. I didn't know if she was making this up to sell me a dud Parka, but the coat was, indeed, manufactured in the U.S.A. There's an interesting coat fact for you to check out Lorraine. I thought that maybe she was wrong and it was a man's coat on the grounds that a woman's coat buttons fasten from the left and a man's fasten from the right. I thought that zips may differ sexually in terms of the side that fastens in a similar way. I took to observing undone coat zips on men and women when out shopping one day. Regardless of sex they were all arranged the same way. The piece that you put in would be handled by the right hand on all the people that I surveyed - apart from a lady who was paying for some goods in W.H. Smith. She spoke to the lady on the till and when she opened her mouth, she had an American accent. I rest my case. American zips have the piece that you put in on the left. British ones have it on the right. Do your own research if you don't believe me.

As I stated above though, I just love coats that cling to my middle section. As I zip the parka up it grabs the whole ,middle of my body, the brown mac is the same when you button it up. I've tried a few other long Parkas on in shops over the last few weeks and they all do it - as long as the zip starts off from calf level or lower. If you don't know what I mean, go and try one on for yourself. Gap had a selection of left sided zips on girl's Parka's when I was there the other day, so you might try there if you want to gauge the strange wrong way round experience too. Go quickly though, they were selling like hot cakes.

I'd better get back to the main point. The brown mac played tricks with Andy's memory. Its not really anything like the mac that Pauline was wearing by her orange Mini in the picture on your website. For a start that one appears to have concealed buttons. Mine are very visible, even when fastened. You've attached another picture of a girl in a hat with a gangster mac on beside his story. I'm impressed Lorraine. You're much closer to the correct picture than him. Its still not strictly accurate though due to the position of the buttons. The gangster mac pictured appears to have its top button not far below neck level. My top one does up just below the middle of my cleavage. No wonder his eyes would focus on me starting to fasten the coat. I always work from the top downwards. The buttons on my coat are plain brown and scooped out like little dishes. They have just the two holes for the thread to go through in the middle. Typically coat buttons have four little holes in them for this purpose. If you want a picture of what I mean try

~.solihullonline.com/m70.htm

[Can't make this work - sorry ed]

A friend of mine who I work with is in this picture that she showed me. It's a picture of a celebration she was in as a child to mark the Queen's silver jubilee. As a coincidence there is a middle aged lady in the photo too. She's towards the back on the right hand side, behind 4 children. Sadly she hasn't got round to buttoning herself up to show off her mac in all its glory. The picture is black and white so I can't tell you if her mac is of the brown variety, but the style is identical to my own. It says the picture was taken in a place called School Road, Shirley in Solihull. Now you know the style of the coat that Andy and I are referring to.

Back to Andy and me and our experiences. I barely spoke to him until we got into the 6th form. One thing he doesn't know though. He made reference to his summer job before starting in the 6th form and how he met people that he liked from the school up the road, how they gave him confidence about bullying tactics. He worked there for the second three weeks of that school holiday having spent the first three weeks with his brother in South East London. My school holiday was the other way round. I spent the first three weeks working in the same place doing the same job. The second three weeks were spent in South East London staying with a friend of mine from my old school and her parents. What a pity one or the other of us didn't do it the other way round. Just imagine if we'd had a chance to get to know each other a bit better by doing the same holiday job for three weeks and then followed that up with three weeks within a mile of each other 100 + miles from both sets of controlling parents.

That might just have been the catalyst required for love in a mac. I think there must have been a fair bit of rain that August - or perhaps any old excuse would do for me to button up in the brown mac. I certainly recall wearing it a fair bit in downtown Lewisham, Catford, Bromley and Beckenham. When we got back to school he told me all about his summer experiences but I chose to never share the rich irony in terms of how our paths had crossed. Perhaps you'll give him the chance to read about it now.

So to that morning at the start of the 6th form then. I remember stepping off the bus, almost into his arms, to use Andy's words. I didn't so much step off the bus into his arms as fall into them. I slipped on the bottom step. He caught me and I'm just a bit miffed that he doesn't seem to remember that bit. Our first physical contact no less. He caught both my arms and seemed to delight in clinging on to me, or was it just the texture of my mac's sleeves that he adored? I'm not at all surprised that he wanted me to hold the umbrella while he did the buttons up. He couldn't hold the umbrella still. His hands kept coming forwards towards the button I was involved with. It was all he could do to help himself. Once I knew this I used to make quite a play of fastening the buttons actually, lots of lavish hand movements would be involved. I always stood up very straight and pushed my boobs out to maximise their size while I was getting myself fastened up. What a tease. I should have let him do it for me really - at least once.

Perhaps I will yet, the next time I see him.

Over the next 3 months I gradually realised that I felt something for Andy. No. That's not true. First of all I felt something, then I felt a bit more, then I felt a lot more. By the beginning of December I was having sleepless nights about him.

I was old fashioned and I wanted any move to come from him. As a real adult - I'm 40 now - I have enough wisdom to know that I should have taken him to one side and snogged the face off him, or at least challenged him verbally for some sort of relationship.

It's easy to say from here though. You might argue that I still should be making a move on him. At 16 I wasn't really all that sure what I was experiencing though. The answer of course was first love and true love at that. If it wasn't why would either of us by writing things like this to a lady we don't know some 25 years later? Even if you do share our love of mackintoshes.

I remember the day when he avoided me in the November - as per his account that he sent you. The rotten bugger! Call me naïve, but I didn't realise that he had done that deliberately. I'll have you know that when I found out that he was in school and hadn't spoken to me I retired to the girls toilet and wept. Soft girl!

Then there was the first kiss ... In the snow. The one that he relates to after he'd pushed his bike for 2 miles. He says that he thought it was passionate. Yes. It was. Even now he lacks the confidence to realise that for sure. It was just so passionate that I was quite scared. I'd never received anything like that before. For the record nobody has ever matched that moment for me where kissing is concerned. I knew that the school Christmas party/dance would be so important for us after that.

We didn't speak about this of course and there was a watershed of a few days between the kiss and the party. Christmas day was a blur. I just wasn't interested. All I wanted was to get my hands on him. I went to the party done up like a dog's dinner which wasn't (and still isn't) normally my style. I left the mac at home that night. New look Sarah. Look out everyone. I walked through the door and he was standing by the bar with a pint of cheap lager in his hand talking to his friends. I made a snap decision that it was time to play hard to get. I hadn't tried this role with him before. I hope Martin doesn't read this. In no time at all, and after a little under age Vodka, Martin and I were dancing and kissing. The poor kid was just a pawn in the game. I wanted a little (or a big) piece of Andy instead.

Oddly though I became quite fond of Martin over a few months and he (unwittingly) helped me to reduce my inner tensions over Andy. It should be noted that I came out of my relationship with Martin as a virgin. In retrospect Martin was a useful decoy because if Andy and I had got it together at that Christmas party there is a very real danger that all the pent up passion could have gone up in a frenetic virginity-losing session (for us both?) with a potential unwanted teenage pregnancy on the record too. A lucky escape perhaps?

Then came Neil. A solid individual who worked for a bank. Well. Dad approved anyway, even if it was the wrong bank as far as he was concerned. Job for life? Well it was - then. Neil was pretty unimaginative actually, but I'd done with imagination and romance. It had scared me to death. As Andy says I married Neil when I was 20. Sadly I was still growing up. I know (just like you doubtless will, that I should have gone searching for Andy then instead of getting married.) He was single then and the passion that we had, still have, and always will, could easily have been re-kindled. The day before our wedding I drove Neil along a local dual carriageway in my car. I had a mac on - a different one by then. You DO have pictures of this type on your website. It is located in your Trencharium. It was made by Etienne Aigner. As per your website's comments, they were indeed common in the late 70's and early 80's. More the early 80's than the late 70's though. This was 1983 and they were about as common as my new Parka is now in fact. I looked up at a figure standing on a bridge over the dual carriageway. He looked quite forlorn about something - staring into space, with no coat on to protect himself from the lashing rain. Quite ironic when I was wearing my mac tightly buttoned inside a dry Renault 5.

It was Andy on the bridge. He didn't see us, I don't think, and Neil didn't recognise him - but I did. I know now that he didn't know I was getting married the next day. At the time (with no little vanity) I thought he did and had somehow managed to find out which road I was driving on and had taken the opportunity to have one last look at me as a single girl.

Neil really was the direct opposite of Andy. Our life lacked excitement. He was totally predictable and I suppose I could have settled for this. Andy ate away at me though. He might say that he wondered where I was, what I was doing etc etc. and I'm sure he didn't know. I have no reason to disbelieve him. I did keep hearing snippets about him though - from people we both went to school with. This involved him moving to London. To the North West part rather than my native South East. Even that was a strange coincidence. Like he was saying that any move to London had to be a million miles from Sarah's roots. He appeared to be making the most of his unmarried existence with a shared house where tenants of both sexes changed regularly. I heard about him enjoying a diet of booze, takeaways and girls. Why not? That's probably what your early 20's are for - not that it was my experience.

Neil and I were married for 10 years. When you consider the mucky divorce that followed I'm just glad we didn't have any children. My hormones hadn't kicked in - at that stage - to use Andy's words in his own letter to you.

That's just another example of what it is about Andy. He reads me like a book. For all he knew I could simply have chosen to have four children later in life. Instead of which he's right. For most of the years that he was out of the equation and was not in touch I was totally unmaternal. One day I snapped. It was the last straw that broke Neil and I up. He didn't want children. Add that to his lack of imagination and there was nowhere left to go. He was 34 and couldn't read emotion. My mind went back to the day when Andy and I were watching a play done by the drama group at school. It was in the heady days of late 1979 that he refers to so fondly, during that oh so enjoyable build up to Christmas that I had enjoyed at least as much as he did. We sat in the school theatre side by side. The lights were dimmed and the play was really sad. My shoulders never moved. I didn't sob out loud, but tears were running down my cheeks at the sadness of the story. He couldn't see this in the dark. He was sitting next to me, not facing me. Andy just handed me his handkerchief in a calm understated sort of way. I asked him how he knew I was crying when we got outside. The words will live with me forever.

"Sometimes Sarah, I just know these things." Well Andy. Neil never "knew these things".

Friends reunited came too late. I was re-married by then. What I would have done to get my hands on Andy in the early to mid-nineties. Mind you, I think he was married by then anyway.

During my single years between marriages I would frequently sleep in my brown mac using it as a night dress. This was best in the winter as being buttoned up in a mac under a duvet in July is a bit of a sweaty experience - and that's just when you're alone. On a cold winter's night though, it's very comforting. Friends reunited occurred after my second marriage had begun. I'd heard about it on the radio and immediately went home and logged on. Imagine my disappointment when he wasn't there. I registered my own details and e-mailed a fair few people to check on how they were.

It was Simon who came up trumps. This was the same man as had told me that Andy was in school on that November day when he avoided me all those years ago. Like Andy, Simon is rather intuitive. I still have his reply e-mail. "Bugger me Sarah. You don't really want to know about me. You want to know about HIM." Simon's e-mail went on to give me details of where Andy was working. He never referred to Andy by name. It said "He" works for .... I checked out the company and used their address with Directory Enquiries and phoned the number. I asked to speak to him and was told he was out of the office today. Could I send him an e-mail? Yes apparently. They simply handed over the e-mail address. It was as easy as that.

I wrote the e-mail to him three times before sending it. My husband was at work so I sat in the office at home typing it with my brown mac on (and buttoned up) for inspiration. It appears to have worked doesn't it ?

Just knowing where he is and being back in contact over the last couple of years has been a real bonus.

Will it be enough?

I doubt it. I'd like to say that this is the end of the story. I wouldn't have thought so though, would you?

Yours buttoned

Sarah

P.S. Apparently Andy didn't give you an address (e or otherwise) to use your words. As a quiet I retiring and utterly lovely guy he wouldn't have done. Had you e-mailed him his work colleagues may have got hold of the e-mail which would have mortified such a private man. Had you written to him at home his wife would have been less than pleased. I'm pretty sure she knows a lot about me. Andy describes the electricity between us at one point. He's not joking.

I have no wish to be any sort of threat to his wife. I'm attracted to him so so much though. I've never even met his wife and I'm sure she's a lovely lady. He certainly deserves one. As a result I'm not going to give you my full name or address either. It may reveal Andy's confidentiality somewhere down the line and I can't risk this. Not for him and not for me. My own husband may be pretty cheesed off too if he found this. On top of all this Andy and I both have children and its not fair to risk either or both our marriages with that in mind unless we'd had some sort of consultation about that. I have my own four children and I've seen the photos of his. They're gorgeous. God knows. Since love always finds a way we will - in all probability both risk everything some day soon. That day isn't today though.

Having said all of that I feel badly about not revealing my identity to you. Its just such a lovely website for those of us who appreciate macs. You've loaded it with such great humour too. I've not got a clue how old you are or what you're like but I suspect you'd be good fun to share a cuppa - or something stronger - with.

Now its your turn to enter a new competition Lorraine. What would you do if you were me - or him for that matter?

'Prickles and berries' were your words to describe his story when you first published it at Christmas. What a lovely sentiment. It certainly sums us up!!

Sarah

Dear Sarah

Well! A fantastic story! I don't know what to say, except Thank you so much!

But you won't let me get away with that, I see. What should you do? I think your own idea is spot on. You should constantly tell yourself you are going to get together - but not yet.

That way you enjoy, and go on enjoying, all the wonderful thrills of anticipation. Anticipation is not everything, but I'm afraid it is a very large part! It's as thrilling as fantasy, but with the fantastic edge that comes from the thought that its heading for reality .... Doesn't matter that it never quite gets there ... Well, it matters, but with a bit of practice and the right frame of mind, it needn't matter all that much.

We would all love to hear from Andy and you again .... it might help the pleasure of anticipation along...

Best wishes

 

Lorraine