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1979 - the very best of times

Dear Lorraine,

Your website intrigues me!

There is so much on there that brings back happy memories and leaves me irritated that there are so few proper macintoshes around today. These modern fabrics do nothing for me!

Like steam trains real macs are a thing of the past! That being the case memories are all that is left and the following may amuse you and your readers.

The date is 1979 - the very best time for anyone turned on by things equestrian. Why? Well:
a) skin tight two way stretch jodhpurs and breeches were just coming in and all the girls were loving showing off in them!
b) rubber riding boots were becoming THE thing to ride in and set off the tight breeches perfectly!
c) and most importantly, traditional off-white or fawn riding macintoshes were still worn everywhere, not just in the country!

Of course before the late seventies the macs were there but only long leather or jodhpur boots were available and breeches and jodhpurs were loose fitting and not terribly attractive.

Later, within three or four years, the macintoshes had gone, or at least were beginning to go - beginning to be replaced by waxed cotton and more recently by breathable fabrics.

So in 1979 I was lucky enough to have a girlfriend and later wife who not only rode but also shared my fascination for riding macs. The first time I met her was on a pouring wet day at a horse show. She was introduced to me by a relative as she got out of her Landrover and she asked me to go into the back of it and hand her her mac. Nothing unusual in that! However, as soon as she started to put it on I knew instinctively that she loved wearing it. She took a lot of trouble about it and made the comment 'Wet days are not all bad, are they?" As I was wearing my own riding mac - I always had one although I did not ride -  I wondered what I could do to tell her I thought she looked magnificent in hers without upsetting things if I had misread the signs of her interest in macs. I simply pulled my belt a bit tighter and fingered the collar, pulling it up a bit higher against the rain. She smiled at me, pulled her own belt tighter and did up the storm tab on her collar.

I knew at once that I was right.

When she had got the horse out of the trailer, she asked me to hand her her whip. There were three in the back of  the LR so I had to ask her which one. When I handed her it - a thick and quite heavy leather jumping whip - she slapped it against her thigh a couple of times making a wonderful smacking noise on her macintosh.

I could tell you endless stories about riding macs and how our affair progressed with them and riding whips as the main ingredients but they would bore you and your readers and might shock them as well.

Suffice to say that we lived for years in a farmhouse where we owned about a dozen macintoshes between us: they were of various sorts and types but there were always at least four or five rubberised riding macs. There were horses in the stables and we went hunting or to shows on wet days both wearing our macintoshes long after most peple had started wearing waxed jackets etc.

Of course, our close friends knew about our obsession and probably most others guessed at it. We thought "What the hell" and just carried on but were very careful never to ram it down people's throats and never wore our macs unless it was wet.

Sad that now even we have - almost - given up on riding macs! Like steam trains they'll never come back!

Or can you prove me wrong? What is needed is a serious advertising campaign, realistic prices and a lovely white riding mac on the back of one or two female equestrian celebrities! - plus perhaps some good photos on you site.

Why don't you redesign it so that ALL the riding mac photos are on one or two pages in small size and people can click on them for larger images?

When are we getting the rest of the Finishing School story - what a lovely girl Imogen looks in her mac!

Yours well macintoshed,

Piers

Dear Piers

Thank you for your letter.

I think you are completely wrong to think more riding mac tales would be boring.

And you may be wrong about the role of 'realistic prices' being necessary before the riding mac rides again. I certainly hope so! Because the only way of getting prices down is to get them to make the material and the garment in China - a few thousand at a time. Come to think of it, that would call for a Venture Capitalist, and since Venture Capitalists want an adventurous return, the price would probably go up not down.

So I hope very much some way will be found of persuading the clientele in whom you place your confidence that for the unique and extreme pleasures of the riding mac no price could be described as 'unrealistic'. Trips to outer space, for example, cost far more, and can dissappoint.

Thanks again for your letter -

LE