My Mum’s Guide to Ladylike Behaviour (and why it didn’t work!)
My mother raised us to be feminine and ladylike. It didn’t work.
My sisters and I usually wore dresses or skirts, even when building a treehouse or playing in the snow. We were taught to be polite to guests and old people, to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and walk nicely instead of scraping our shoes.
We spent most of our play-time having dolls’ tea parties (preferably with real food, begged by little Alice in her sweetest voice), playing hospitals (all the dolls had a neat appendix scar after my operation) and being teachers with a classful of disobedient dolls and teddy bears.
I remember Mum brushing the tangles out of my long hair – agony! When I wouldn’t stand still, she’d remind me that ladies used to brush their hair one hundred times. How did they stand it? I always wondered.
To keep my fringe neatly out of the way, she used to do my hair with two little braids above the main plaits. My friends could never figure out how it was done!
She showed us how to polish our shoes, and I remember her saying, “The mark of a lady is a polished heel.” I imagined the ladies walking around, leaving little c-shaped polish-marks on the floor with their heels…
She taught us basic cooking, including how to peel an apple all in one go without breaking the skin (a skill I used every Halloween), how to top-and-tail gooseberries, and how to cut a cross in the bottom of sprouts – and greedy little Emily gladly learned how to make home-made cakes.
Ladies don’t curse, of course, although Mum told us a ‘swear word’ she had invented as child: swinking foddle. But I still cherish the memory of The Day When Mum Said A Rude Word!
We came rushing into the kitchen, dripping mud and water from some disgusting item we’d dug up in the garden.
“Get that BL**DY thing out of here!” she shouted.
We did.
Fast.
We’d never heard Mum swear before – it was very effective!
Mum taught us to sew, and we would make clumsy finger puppets and needle-books out of felt, cutting zig-zag edges with the ever-fascinating pinking shears. We sewed dolls’ outfits with huge stitches, desperately trying to make the cotton last to the end of the seam so we didn’t have to thread the needle again!
She showed us lots of fancy stitches, and my sister Kate even produced a sampler, although the most impressive thing I ever did was to chain-stitch my name onto my PE top.
I remember being very impressed when Mum used her sewing machine. There was something scarily fierce about the way it would unexpectedly roar into life and pull the fabric through under the needle at lightning speed. We were hard up, so we didn’t get many new clothes, so she would cut down old curtains or dresses into pinafore dresses for us and make matching dresses for our dolls. I was especially amazed when she made us new mittens out of the sleeves of her old jumpers. She turned the sweater inside out, placed your hand at the ribbed wrist section and drew a mitten shape around your hand, then she machine-stitched over the line, cut it out, turned it inside out and you had a new pair of mitts – brilliant!
She introduced us to knitting, and bought us special wool which changed colour as you knitted, but I was always dropping stitches and losing three rows trying to put it right. It seemed to take forever – I don’t think I managed to produce anything more elaborate than a holey scarf for my teddy, Sally Jones.
But Mum was great at knitting – there were exciting mornings when we woke up to find small brown paper parcels on the bed, full of clothes Mum had knitted for our Amanda Jane dolls. Thank you, Mum x
Gardening was another activity which met with Mum’s approval. We had a small garden each, where we would plant seeds (which usually died because we forgot to water them), and grow pea plants up sticks. She took us on educational walks (groan!) and taught us to identify leaves and wild flowers. We would collect and press them to stick in a scrapbook – another ladylike pursuit.
She always encouraged us to read (partly because while we were reading, we weren’t doing something naughty), although for some reason she would tell me off if she caught me reading after bedtime by the light of the conveniently-placed street-lamp outside my bedroom window.
For some obscure reason, Mum had the idea that we were a musical family. This was not backed up by any substantive evidence, as none of my relatives played an instrument as far as I recall. However, for two years I walked gloomily around the corner to piano lessons, scuffing my shoes rebelliously as soon as I was out of sight. I also had five years of recorder lessons and three years of violin lessons at school. At the end of that time, I couldn’t read music or play a single tune on any instrument.
Yes, I can honestly say that it’s thanks to Mum that I’m the perfect lady I am today.
Were you raised to be ladylike? Leave me a comment below.
