Image by 👀 Mabel Amber, who will one day from Pixabay
A quick glance out of my window this morning confirmed what I was already feeling.
The sun was shining, the sky was a lovely shade of blue, and the bird station in the garden was alive with small birds, all trying for the best spot. I spotted a magpie holding court in the enormous gum tree in my neighbour’s garden. Today these branches were stationary, gone at last were those terrible winds…
In other words, today was a good day. The fridge freezer was trying to behave, and I had made an appointment with the Hotpoint engineers to sort it out. I have booked the afternoon for a writing session, as it is high time I got to grips with that.
As for the Macbook, that is back in its box awaiting delivery. I tried very hard to learn the Apple ropes, but I had to give in. My old brain likes things a little less complicated these days.
I have the rest of the morning to play catch up, and I will begin by posting our review for The Rat and the Python: Fashion by Alex Craigie. (or Trish, for those of you who love her books!)
If you haven’t heard of a liberty bodice, believe that half-a-crown is something to do with impoverished royalty and never had the experience of slapping a television to stop the grainy black and white picture from rolling, then this series might not be for you. Please give it a go, though – I suspect that most of it will still resonate no matter where you were brought up!
Book 3 looks at fashion and how it’s changed since the end of WWII. From utility coats and twinsets, to schoolboys in short trousers with socks and garters. From the swinging sixties with its long, long hair and short, short skirts, to psychedelia and beyond.
The Rat in the Python is about Baby Boomers who, in the stability following the Second World War, formed a statistical bulge in the population python. It is a personal snapshot of a time that is as mystifying to my children as the Jurassic Era – and just as unrecognisable.
My intention is to nudge some long-forgotten memories to the surface, test your own recollections and provide information and statistics to put it all in context.
Are you sitting comfortably?
Then I’ll begin…
About the author
Alex Craigie
Alex Craigie is the pen name of Trish Power.
Trish was ten when her first play was performed at school. It was in rhyming couplets and written in pencil in a book with imperial weights and measures printed on the back. There were two princes in it – one was called Rupert and the other was changed to Sam because she couldn’t find enough rhymes for Randolph.
When her children were young, she wrote short stories for magazines before returning to the teaching job that she loved.
Trish has had six books published under the pen name of Alex Craigie. Three books cross genre boundaries and feature elements of romance, thriller and suspense against a backdrop of social issues. Someone Close to Home highlights the problems affecting care homes, Acts of Convenience has issues concerning the health service at its heart, and The Bubble Reputation reflects her fears about social media and the damage it can do. Another book. Means to Deceive, is a psychological thriller set in Pembrokeshire in Wales.
Someone Close to Home has won a Chill with a Book award and a Chill with the Book of the Month award. In 2019 it was one of the top ten bestsellers in its category on Amazon.
The Bubble Reputation won a Chill With a Book Premier Readers’ Award in 2023.
She is currently writing a series of books called The Rat in the Python about growing up as a Baby Boomer. The title comes from the term for the bulge in the population statistics caused by post-war babies.
Our Review
I love these books so much because they don’t just remind you of the past; you get to live it all over again in brilliant technicolour! Almost every page has photographs of long-forgotten clothing and lifestyle fashions from the sixties, seventies and eighties, and not all of them deserve to be forgotten.
Even if you haven’t given a thought to what you wore as a child, this book brings all those memories back, including the discomfort! Every page brings memories, as fresh as the day you made them, reminding us just how much our lives have changed.
The Swinging Sixties will always be my favourite, as this was when I started developing my own style. I was very much a hippie then, preferring comfortable baggy jumpers and T-shirts. In many ways, I still am!
I did try the quiz at the end, designed to test your knowledge. It was fun but my memory let me down several times. All in all, I recommend all of these books for their humour and knowledge, and eagerly await the next one…
Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes 
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