30. Dedicated Followers Of Fashion - Salisbury, Rhodesian style.

We in the Chequers beat group followed the fashion trends coming out of the U.K. almost as slavishly as the music. In our eyes the U.K. was the arbiter of all things cool…or in 60’s speak, ‘fab’.

When the Beatles ‘Rubber Soul’ album arrived in Salisbury’s record shops we noted on the cover the Fab Four wearing Polo Neck sweaters. Wow, sweaters with necks on them! It never occurred to us that the polo necks The Beatles were wearing weren’t necessarily a fashion statement but a cold weather garment, a defense against the bitter British winter.                                      
                                                                                                                                                                    The fact that The Beatles wore polo neck sweaters made polo neck sweaters fashionable, and not just fashionable but ‘must have fashionable’.  

In the words of the Kinks’ classic, “We seek them here, we seek them there. In Manica Road to Cecil Square...” (I've changed Regent Street for Manica Road and Leicester Square for Cecil Square)... but it was all to no avail.

Shopkeepers in Salisbury, Rhodesia in the middle of Africa are no different to shopkeepers anywhere else on the planet; they work on the ‘supply and demand’ principle. None of the Salisbury clothes shops we visited stocked a solitary polo neck sweater. Not one. There must have been a reason for the absence of polo neck. Possibly in such a hot climes only a lunatic would ever think of wearing one...only later we would discover the truth of that axiom.

It was our belief that the Polo Neck was such a new trend it hadn't reached the colonial outpost that was Salisbury. Undaunted we broaden our search for the elusive garment. And then after days of banging our heads against a wall - not literally of course - we struck lucky... ‘lucky’ was to prove debatable.

Through a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend we were told we should approach such and such, a junior administrator at the Rhodesian Railway...which we did. Such and such instructed us to go down to the Rhodesian Railway depot and tell the store man, who shall remain nameless, not because we swore an oath of secrecy but because I can’t remember his name, that such and such had sent us.

It was all very hush-hush, cloak and dagger as Mac, Lea and I followed the nameless store man down aisles full of racks with various sized overalls, railway men’s belts, conductor’s suits, hats and boots, etcetera, etcetera, till finally he stopped and pulled aside a sheet of tarpaulin to reveal a pile of thick knitted, heavy, coarse blue woolen Rhodesian Railway Polo Necks!

A price was agreed for three and as soon as the money changed hands we hurried out into the blazing hot African sun, whipped our shirts off and pulled the polo necks on.

           

“Yissus Jong”!!! The phrase has many different connotations but in this case it meant ‘bloody hell’. 

I kid you not the wool was so coarse it was like wearing a sweater made of sand paper... or wire wool or something excruciatingly abrasive. It made me think of those medieval monks guys who wore horse hair shirts. At least they thought by wearing them they were atoning their sins...we weren’t guilty of any wrong doing...well, with the possible exception of peeing in the Churchill School rain gauge... and filling a condom with salad cream and secreting it in a sandwich at a party... and of course there was the nicking of six speakers from the Metro Drive In, in the ‘Great Speaker Heist’ which I’ve already mentioned...but I digress. 

Every little movement, even the simple act of breathing, was a trial. The coarse wool rubbed, scratched and irritated with the venom of a thousand red ants. Zits which had disappeared under layers of Clearasil suddenly erupted into life like so many tiny volcanoes. After ten minutes of sheer unadulterated torment ‘looking cool’, a contradiction in terms when referring to a thick woolen Polo Neck jersey in 80 degrees plus Africa, was completely overshadowed by the thought of being free of this instrument of torture. With a sigh of relief we pulled the Polo necks off. 

You could have been forgiven in thinking we were wearing blotchy red long sleeve undershirts...our bodies from wrist to waist to chin were one big rash. And boy-oh-boy did we itch. That’s not a question, that’s a statement of fact. Whether it was the coarse wool or the little skellems (minuscule nasties) living in the wool fiber  I couldn't tell you...but it left a mental scar...I still have nightmares about it.  What became of the Polo Necks? If I remember rightly we sold them to a rock band even more gullible than us. We unpicked the Rhodesia Railway emblem and told them they were genuine Beatles polo necks as seen on the Rubber Soul album. You know what they say, it takes a plonka to catch a plonka.