Dungaree Memories

Dungarees have played a big part in my life - mainly stopping people seeing my underwear. I wore them as a young child and then between the ages of 17-23, they were my main trouser-type item of clothing, normally worn with the top half left free to dangle. Here are three memories of times I have been wearing dungarees.

1985

I'm guessing the year and I'm also slightly guessing the fact that I am wearing dungarees for this particular memory, but if you look closely at the picture, it looks like there is snow adorning the rooftops in the background and this small detail has sent my memory down this particular avenue. As a five-year old I lived a mere 29 houses away from Brighton sea-front and it was on a regular basis that I would clutch the hand of my mum or dad and wander seawards to gaze out at the watery expanse in front of me. I was always trying to see France, but never could and I grew doubtful whether it really was as close as the maps suggested. There was a playground next to a lagoon at the bottom of the road and I used to enjoy clambering into the tunnel on a climbing frame and sitting enclosed in the red plastic and imagining that I was living an adventure and not just sitting on a climbing frame waiting for the call to go home. There was an arcade next to the park where I used to watch the claw grabber attempting to snatch up a soft toy, but always fail - that has turned into Heather Mills-McCartney's vegan cafe now - I have a lot of sympathy for her; she seems to be hated for inconceivable reasons.

But back to the eighties: this dungaree day was a day when snow had turned the playground into an assortment of abandoned white shapes as everyone chose the hill leading down to the park to be the new place to play accompanied by sledges or bin-liners. Careering down the hill on a sledge was a thrilling moment of abandon. In my memory my dad carefully crafted the sledge in his workshop that very morning, but thinking back, he didn't have a workshop and my memory must have invented this detail. The hill seemed enormous - years later as I stroll down towards the park and choose against expensive vegan ice cream I can't quite believe that this tiny slope is the same hill that sent my stomach somersaulting with ecstatic terror. The picture you see, I imagine, is me with my rosey-cheeked sister, Jenny, standing by the radiator getting warm after one of the most exciting mornings of our lives.

1999

I was working for Newfrontiers, a worldwide group of churches, on a campsite near Coventry manning the Information Desk for a big conference church holiday type thing. I was into the third week and an early shift in the third week of camping is a painful one, but I had the previous night's leftover curry to keep me company and that made the world a better place by far. I pulled on my dungarees that were slowly ripping and shredding and were held together at the trouser seam and knee by gaffa tape and chose against waiting in a queue to have a shower and headed straight to the place where I would be dispensing information for the morning.

When I look back now I realise that an unwashed man with gaffa taped dungarees and mop of bleached hair munching his way through a cold curry is probably not a man you want information from, but if there was something you needed to know, you had little choice but to smell the combined fumes of curry-breath and stale sweat whilst receiving instruction. At least I was equipped with the correct information.

2003

My band was called Bungle and we specialised in a combination of thrashing our instruments with fierce energy and microphone growling. For this particular gig drummer Tim Gordon had decided that a drum solo would be an appropriate opening, so while he clattered away I performed some improvised dance so as not to look like a spare piece. I had the perfect dangling dungaree look going on, but whilst my appearance could not be faulted, it was not ideal for the kind of shapes I was throwing and as I attempted some kind of forward roll ending with a jerkish leap to my feet propelled by my shoulders, I found that my feet had become entangled with my dungaree straps and I was helplessly trapped in a sort of crab position; not wanting to look like foolish, I continued to dance whilst becoming disentangled. I finally achieved disentanglement and continued with the show, but I fear the rock star persona that I was attempting to create for myself had been replaced with a combination of Mr Bean and Frank Spencer.