God, I hate tights!!! Come to think of it, I hate tights almost as much as I hate God... but that's another story. 'Pantyhose' my American friends call them; at least that name is as ugly as the garment itself which must have been invented by a man to torture women. Men do that a lot... mammograms; cervical smears; bras. Though come to think of it, almost every man I've known has rolled over and salivated when his fingers discovered the band of bare skin above my stockings. So perhaps it was a puritan man with a mission to protect the virtue of womankind who did the deed. I haven't owned a pair of tights in years, but there was a time when it seemed oh, so grown up to be wearing them in place of the over-the-knee black socks that were a staple of my private girls' school uniform.
We were Upper Sixth-Form prefects and proud of it. It's a strange year, Upper Sixth, perculiar to the British education system; Year 13 it's called in State schools... a year in which we'd both turned eighteen but adult freedoms were still beyond the horizon of university.
Janette had been one of my closest friends during the turmoil of our early teenage years and we had shared angst and ecstasy, hope and disappointment, romance and heartbreak. Now it was our lot to share the responsibility for forty Fourth Form girls (yes, our school was determinedly traditional so would never have called them Year 10 girls) on their Christmas trip to the Ballet.
Carmina Burana is amazing; one of my all time favourites. The Birmingham Royal Ballet's interpretation was seductive and exotic with lush sets and stunning costumes. We sat high in the Gods, perched like Gods ourselves looking down on the world... and it was HOT; hot from the lights; hot because we were close together in plush upholstered theatre seats; hot because, well... Carmina Burana is HOT! Especially to teenage girls with raging hormones; and hot because we were wearing tights.
