Letter 5
A School Knickers Anecdote
from 'School Knickers Anecdotes - Will Johnson'
contributed by Steve
Dear Madam,
I have found a collection of stories called 'School Knickers Anecdotes -
Will Johnson' which were apparently, "written circa 1990 and posted to purchasers
of genuine school knickers who had answered an advertisement in Exchange &
Mart in the UK”. No stories are credited by name or date unfortunately.
Some relate to the wearing of kilts, and I thought that this letter might
be of interest to readers of your wonderful site.
'Thank you for the delivery of the bottle-green bloomers. They really do
recall my schooldays.
You will probably have come across this before, but in Scotland in the ‘fifties
it was quite common for boys to wear bottle green knickers under their kilts.
This was because those schools, for which the kilt was part of the uniform,
insisted on bottle green underpants, or as they would be called here, trews.
Boys’ bottle green trews were never all that readily available, and tended
to be expensive, and this resulted in boys quite simply and sensibly being
put into girls’ regulation green school knickers.
I spent most of my school days with an aunt in Edinburgh, where I attended
a private school. The uniform was either grey short trousers or, in my case,
the kilt. I think I would have been introduced to green knickers when I was
about nine, and I can honestly say that all of us who had to wear them detested
the wretched things.
Despite the fact that they were by no means uncommon and, to be fair, they
were perfectly comfortable; they remained a constant source of embarrassment
which, in my case, increased as I got older. The knickers were bad enough,
but they were at least quite brief. My real dread was the onset of winter,
when my aunt would decide that it was time for my warm bloomers.
They were regulation bottle green, but much longer in the leg, being secured
with broad elastic just above the knees, and coming up very high in the waist
so that their tops showed above the waistband of my kilt, and they were only
concealed by my school pullover. I think they were in fine wool, and were
certainly warm to wear.
I can clearly remember, even at the age of fifteen or sixteen, being taken
to Forsythe’s in Edinburgh, at the start of the winter term, for various items
of school uniform, stockings, shirts etc., and an assistant being dispatched
to the girls’ outfitting and returning with three or four pairs of new bloomers
for me. I even had to endure the discomfort of having them held up to my waist
to check the size. As you can imagine, by the time I was sixteen the bloomers
that my aunt was buying for me were truly enormous, and I was conscious of
the legs of my huge knickers flapping under my kilt, and being exposed every
time I climbed a stair, or if there was the slightest breeze.
I am quite sure that my aunt did not insist on me wearing knickers with
any intention of embarrassing me. It was just that she was a more extreme
example of how parents regarded their children in those days regardless of
age. In those days, even in one’s teens, we were still regarded as school
boys and were expected to behave as such. We certainly dressed accordingly,
there being no relaxation of the standard expected as we got older. In my
final years at school some of my friends were still attending in cap, blazer
and neatly pressed grey short pants. The wearing of school uniform definitely
influenced our behaviour, as everyone knew which school we attended, and any
wrongdoing would inevitably be reported.
My aunt was not an especially severe woman, but she would not tolerate disobedience
or bad behaviour of any description, and she believed in dealing with the
matter as and when it arose. If I did something that displeased her, without
preamble, she would lift up my kilt at the back and deliver two very hard
whacks to the seat of my knickers, which quickly brought me to my senses.
On the mercifully few occasions when she considered that something more serious
was merited, she would take down my knickers, put me across her knees and,
with my kilt up, give me a bare bottom spanking that would have me on my best
behaviour for weeks.
Despite loathing them as a young man, I now wear green knickers under my
kilt from choice, so I was pleased to find a pair of bloomers such as I had
not seen for many years. I wish to order two more pairs of the bottle green
bloomers.
I hope you like this letter but, more importantly, I hope you are able
to produce another excellent Christmas Special, together with another spellbinding
'Dummy Discipline Digest'. Good luck.
Steve
* * * * *
Thanks for this contribution, which I imagine is quite a rarity. Has any
other reader ever seen a copy of 'School Knickers Anecdotes'? At my school
we wore maroon knickers, which we thought were very exclusive, although bottle
green is a good colour for school knickers. I bet Mary Archer, and Petronella
Wyatt, wore maroon knickers to school.
Despite rumours to the contrary, Scotsmen do wear something under their
kilts.
Susan