Trousers
 
I never recall grandmother wearing trousers.
We would often argue their case –
Even coax with expensive pairs from M and S.
But she would dismiss as ‘unladylike’ ,
opting to wear tweed skirts for outdoor pursuits.
 
Yet found photos reveal slacks were
the war time livery of her 18 hour days,
that forfeited femininity, thieved prettiness.    
Certainly no land-girl glamour for her,
with their cinched in uniforms, siren-red lipstick.
Grandfather often caught in their company
sharing roll-ups and off-colour jokes.
 
Her days were reveille of double
summer time; straight out to the farm
where her tasks waited tapping their fingers .
Potato picking, bent double all day  
as if bowing to the despotic land.
In the hop gardens, squatting or kneeling ,
her female fingers nimble from needlework,
ideal for the fiddly business of encouraging
shoots to curl around the strings.
 
Whilst the men enjoyed a second breakfast
and a Churchillian power nap,
she scurried home to shoo daughters to school,
sling a casserole in the oven.
Returning to chivvy twin plough horses.
Her furrows one plain one pearl neat.  
When the stallion played up,
she would tiptoes reach up
catch his lower lip, twisted it like a Chinese burn,  
forcing his head down to her 4 ft 10 ins  
eyeball to eyeball ‘Behave you sod’
until he blinked first.
 
Clocking off at nature's blackout
grandfather read the paper
whilst she ‘saw to dinner’.
Afterwards down to the Three Horseshoes
for cribbage and his ‘usual’ until closing time .
Her day's second shift then,
keeping the cottage’s  dust, dirt, damp under,
then bed and the final wifely chore -
 
No wonder at liberation
she demobbed herself from trousers  
that would later become the uniform
of a different conflict for women.  
Today we are free to be strangers
to skirts and frocks, instead opt for slacks,
sartorial symbols that apparently,
we both wear the trousers now -

Fiona Sinclair

If you have any thoughts about this poem,  Fiona Sinclair would be pleased to hear them