Carol’s Column
So why don't Xmas stockings fit?
YOU know your kids are growing up when you kiss them goodnight and graze your cheek on their beards.
When they stop bringing home broken birds of the feathered variety and bring home birds with blonde curls instead.
When they rush to answer the phone instead of playing dead on top of the record player.
When the Village People replaces Flopsie Bunnie as top of the pops and there's an early morning queue to use your razor.
You know they're on their way to adulthood when you stop saying "Eat with your mouth."
You know you're married when at a party, Ryan O'Neal's double makes a pass at you and you tell him you've got backache.
When you wear a long-sleeved nightie with a turtle neck and built-in fleecy-lined feet to bed and when Dallas is more interesting than the Kinsey Report (unabridged).
When you discuss her son's flat feet with your mother-in-law, when stretch-polyester underwear replaces black lace and when the man asleep at the end of an elegant dinner table is your husband.
You also know you're married when you come home in the early hours and he says: "So how was the PTA meeting?"
When your husband brings you exotic moose-skin boots from Alaska and they're two sizes too small, when he buys wheels for the rubbish bin or a Mitchell reel for his fishing rod for your birthday.
Yes, you know you're married when you have your hair set in a dashing new-image style and he pats your head and kisses the dog hello.
You know you're getting old when your sons' friends help you out of the car, ask you if there was electricity when you were young and refuse to call you by your first name.
When you leave your false teeth in the unused ashtray at the cinema and nobody notices.
When you begin to shrink out of your skin and when you wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and decide the day should be cancelled.
You know you're past your prime when your chins don't fit into your collar and the kid's teacher could call you Mother.
text cut off in photographper and silver glitter.
When the dog drinks the brandy for the Christmas pud and you roast the turkey with scrumptious stuffing and the plastic bag inside.
When rugby socks are washed for the first time in a year and decorated with tinsel and hung up three weeks early.
When the garage man, milk man, traffic cop, dry-cleaning lady, school principal, veggie man and husband man smile at you — you know it's Christmas.
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Editorial note
Masthead reads "Sunday Express LIVING, December 7, 1980 11"; 7 December 1980 was a Sunday. Flag "Living", standing head "Carol's column". In the drawing a man stands behind an armchair with a comb and a pair of scissors, admiring the shaggy dog sitting up in it, while his wife works at the stove through the doorway behind him. The clipping was cut to fit the source page, the first column running its whole depth and the other two alongside it at the top. The clipping sits small in its frame, 611px of paper where the rest of that batch gives 900 or more, and the type goes soft under magnification. The foot of the first column fades past recovery. Four or five lines are gone between "could call you Mother" and the "per and silver glitter" that opens the second column, and the last of them is clipped by the bottom edge of the photograph besides. A closer photograph would settle those lines and the name in the fourth paragraph, and the page is marked for one. The drawing is not read from this photograph. It was shot separately in close-up, and the caption and the signature are taken from that.
Transcribed as printed. Doubtful readings:
- "Flopsie Bunnie": the name is not certain and has been left as it best appears. At this size the letters will not resolve; Flopsy, Flopsie and Floppie all fit the shapes, and the second word is no firmer. It is not carried into the indexes on a reading this soft.
- "Eat with your mouth.": printed thus, and the line stops short of the measure. Whether a closing word dropped out in the setting, or the joke is meant to end there, cannot be told from this photograph.
- "[TEXT CUT OFF IN PHOTOGRAPH]per and silver glitter": the second column opens on the tail of a word, so the lost lines at the foot of the first ended in "pa-".