Shakespeare and Brown... — Ex-Knitteryarn

Cameo by PaulinaP in Blueskies Mélange 100% Alpaca

I never photographed this (extended) Cameo before giving it to Jane, and at least one winter has passed since then... and I'm suddenly in Shakespearean mode... So I asked Jane if the brown-and-pink shawl was still on the go, and she emailed direct from her sofa...

I bought this lovely mélange yarn at a http://www.thisisknit.ie sale, because the quality and the pink both appealed to me enormously. I liked the combination of brown-and-pink too, but while I can admire and appreciate brown theoretically, it's a colour I absolutely don't wear - I had a brown school uniform for what seemed like forever.

When I was aged eleven I was moved abruptly to a new school in the middle of a school year - meaning I left a small and decidedly no-uniform system for a huge school with a disgusting brown uniform - the most disgusting brown uniform. I also left a junior cycle for a senior cycle, was eleven where most were at least twelve, had to learn to navigate timetables and room and very daunting textbook changes with which everyone else was already familiar. I was a different religion too - not just a much bigger deal then than now, but also at that time meaning that I knew nobody at all. Against the odds, though, I liked it as much as it's possible to like anything throughout teenage years... Children didn't have a lot of say but I had older siblings, which prepares anyone for pretty much anything, and had already learned that low expectations and a thick skin gets you through an awful lot. Yes, I was mostly very cheerily miserable there (which in retrospect could have been the problem) (because something I've learned since is that there are people who are jealous of even that).

Not long after my arrival, the form teacher announced an upcoming weekend school trip to Stratford-upon-Avon - my first trip abroad - and the cause of weeks of negotiating over who to sit beside on the coach and who would be room mates at the accommodation. The play was to be Richard II, we'd see Shakespeare's birthplace, Ann Hathaway's garden, Coventry too. We'd pass Birmingham on roads called M22 and suchlike, which up to that point had only been mythical concepts referred to by BBC radio 1 disc jockeys on traffic reports (while you waited to hear the Top 30)(life and death issue in those days). In England we could also stock up on Opal Fruits and Mars Bars, which were unavailable here.

On the mail boat, berths could be reserved and so it was agreed that I was to share with three of my new friends. We were to depart from school on a school day in full uniform, but from the following day we could wear our own clothes. For my birthday I got a cheesecloth blouse with a tie-waist, Sloopy jeans with X belt loops and embroidered blue canvass clogs, and this was when they'd get their first serious outing.

First night was great: posing near the slot machines as though we might be thinking of playing them (they were for over-eighteens), only were too cool eating chocolate and sleeping in our berths. The following morning we were woken early for breakfast before disembarking. I went to get my bag and get dressed but found that in the night someone had taken all my things - all my new finery was gone. This was devastating for many reasons, not least that I felt I'd be in very serious trouble back home - in our house you didn't lose stuff lightly. And I couldn't believe that I alone would have the humiliation of staying in my vile brown uniform for the whole weekend in front of all my dolled up classmates, not to mention the cosmopolitan English. Off the boat, there was an interminably long coach journey where everything seemed odd and my friends very taken up with their own business; and eventually at the bed-and-breakfast, it transpired that apparently I hadn't understood that the friends had decided ages before to take someone other than me to make up their foursome for their room. And so I had to make up another plan for myself.

We travelled back home on a different boat, and my belongings were eventually found on that, stuffed into a plastic bag, later in the week, meaning someone on the trip had...which was kind of more than i was able to think about at the time...

I learned a lot - not least that there are always a few nice people around too, but while I've gone through many phases of trying to wear brown again, I'm never fully convinced.