Figure 1.-.

My older brother and I normally wore short trousers while we were still in primary school. It was different for my little brother who began attending a primary school without a uniform restriction. He wore long trousers a lot more than my older brother and I ever did. My older brother was the first to get proper long trousers. He got long trousers when he began his secondary school at age 11 and I did as well when I began. He also had long trousers for Scouts which changed the uniform by the time he moved on from Cubs. He also had a suit with flared trousers. At the time that I was still wearing those checked shorts I mentioned. Our first long trousers though were jeans, although mum didn't really approve of them. As far as denim out of school goes - it was still frowned on by some parents in the 60s/70s. We had them, both long and short versions. My little brother even wore them to school. My mum wouldn't let us wear them, however, when out with her - even shopping - or on a Sunday for some reason.

Short Trousers

I mostly wore short trousers as a boy. Most boys I knew did so also. Mum never explained why and it was so common that we never really questioned this, even in the Winter. Most of my shorts were grey school shorts. Our school required grey shorts as part of the school uniform. Not all schools had this requirement, but many did. Mum almost always had us wear shorts after school as well. I wore new ones to school and then as they wore out I wore them for play. I also had cord shorts for play and casual wear. They weren't allowed at school even grey ones. Not all boys had cord shorts. As far as I can recall you either liked cords or hated them when I was a kid. I think I liked them precisely because my older brother didn't!I didn't mind wearing shorts, except for a horrid pair of checked shorts my grandmother bought for best wear. Mum also bought Summer shorts for us. I noticed substantial differences in how boys viewed short trousers in the 1970s and 80s.

My Brothers

My older brother and I normally wore short trousers while we were still in primary school. It was different for my little brother who began attending a primary school without a uniform restriction. He wore long trousers a lot more than my older brother and I ever did. My older brother was the first to get proper long trousers. He got long trousers when he began his secondary school at age 11. I also got long trousers when I moved up to my grammar school, but not right away. My older brother also had long trousers for Scouts which changed the uniform by the time he moved on from Cubs. He also had a suit with flared trousers. At the time that I was still wearing those checked shorts I mentioned.

My Grammar School

I did not immediately get long trousers on starting at secondary school like my older brother did. This is because when he did move on to secondary school I inherited all of our school shorts - and Mum bought me a new pair too (along with that jumper I told you about) in order to be "fair" (I had been pestering her for a pair of the new-style BHS shorts since I had come back from Germany). When we moved my little brother was due to go to a non-uniform school so the grey school shorts would not go down to him and Mum decided that I could start my new school in them. I wasn't so bothered about getting long trousers as my brother was - and I had been pleased during my last year at primary school with having the shorts all to myself so that I could wear the best ones (the most modern) without having to fight with my brother over them. As I have told you when I went for the interview at my Grammar School we were shown round by prep school boys and they all wore shorts as was the rule for them. I assumed that all of the boys starting at the school would be wearing shorts - and in fact as I wrote earlier about half were - those coming up from the prep department and those of us who still had our primary school shorts to wear out. The only extra expense for Mum was buying the socks in the school colours. We had to get them at the school's own shop and they were very expensive - about three times the price of our primary school socks which just had two green rings on and could be bought at BHS. The new socks were three-coloured (you can see the prep school boys wearing them in the photo I sent you - and the jumper has the same three bands in my passport photo).Mum only bought me long trousers later on - when I burnt a hole in a pair of my new socks one bonfire night and she thought it cheaper to buy long trousers and normal short grey socks than those expensive school socks - and my shorts were getting a bit worn by then anyway.As I said some boys did wear shorts still right through into the second year (and beyond in the case of the "German" boy I told you about) - and when I did get my longs I think that I told you about the boy who invited me home for tea in the hope of his parents buying him a pair too!

Jeans

My first long trousers though were jeans, although mum didn't really approve of them. As far as denim out of school goes - it was still frowned on by some parents in the 60s/70s. We had them, both long and short versions. My little brother even wore them to school. My mum wouldn't let us wear them, however, when out with her - even shopping - or on a Sunday for some reason. There was a big change in my life after moving on to secondary school as,as I told you,that move coincided with us being rehoused to a different part of London. Anyway that's not a lot to do with clothing (except that in the new area there was much less of a mixture of people - class, race everything - and so it was not so interesting because of that. You had to conform more just to survive as a teenager and that is why I became a skinhead eventually). Anyway what I was thinking about was something that I mentioned below and that was the different attitudes to jeans around that time especially as a few years later almost everybody had them including adults. As I said my Mum did eventually buy us a pair each - but they came from the market.

Bill