Dressed to Kill

By Moira Cairns

My first job was at Bevans on Shields Road working in the shoe department. I loved working there but hated feet and still do. It was a busy day with it being Saturday but I liked busy days as it made the day pass quicker. A lady called me over and said that the shoes she was trying on were a bit tight, I informed her that we had a machine that slightly stretches shoes so I took them and went to the back room. I put the shoes on the machine which was nothing more than a broom handle and rattled the shoes around on the broom making a lot of noise and took them back to the lady, she said ‘thank you very much, they are a perfect fit’ job done. The day flew by and 5.30 came so quick so it was time to go to Gibson street baths. We didn’t have a bath at home so we went to the public baths, you just went in, paid your money at there and entered a cubicle. The baths in there were huge and a woman would come in with a large key to turn the water on. She would fill the bath and then leave, you would rush to get undressed and then jump in the huge bath, it was bliss. I would stay there soaking away for what seemed like hours until my skin turned into a prune all wrinkled. Once I had a bath and got home it was time to get ready to go out, get the lippy, panstick, pencil and block mascara which you had to spit on the little brush that went with it and apply it to your eyelashes until they stood out like spikes. You put the panstick on which gave you an interesting look, well we thought so at the time, then finally your lippy on. Then came the dress because I wore two, I wore one of my sister’s shawl dresses as she was older than me and so had the fashionable clothes with mine a bit longer on top. Then came the hair, which we would back comb within an inch of a life and then comb over, you could either have it down and curled up at the ends or in a French plait which you sprayed the Bellaire hair lacquer on. Concords could’ve used it to land and take off and not a strand of hair would’ve moved out of place. Once I was ready it was off the majestic in town. We were full of excitement on reaching our destination and paid to get in and then off to the cloakroom to remove the top dress, I was dressed to kill. We made our way to the dance floor and the crystals were playing: ‘da do run run run da do run run, met him on a Monday and my heart stood still, da do run run run da do run run’ when the lads would come up and ask you to dance saying ‘can we split you up’ or ‘are you dancing’ we had agreed beforehand that if one of us got the ugly one we would only have one dance but we usually ended up staying there dancing away. It was full of people we knew so if we came off the dance floor there were plenty of people to talk to and to dance with.