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I can’t remember just when I last saw a lad with a scab on his knees, I suppose with short trousers being abandoned sometime in the fifties, knees were offered some protection from falling and grazing or cutting them by being shoved into long trousers plus the fact kids seem to have stopped the rough and tumble of playing on asphalt or concrete. Scabs were a very rare thing on the little girls as a result maybe because of the different types of play, lads scroming trees and walls and girls playing with dolls and prams. I can’t remember not having scabby knees and shins right up to when I got my first long trousers at the age of eleven or so but I do remember the pastime of picking scabs, lifting the hard crust and invariably causing more blood to flow, the times my mother berated me for picking my damaged knees, I’ve never had cut knees, shins or elbows since my step into adolescence by way of my first long trousers, today’s children are dressed as adults as soon as they gain the ability to crawl, lads don’t bare their knees until football catches their attention and in some respect the same happens to girls, school games warranted bare knees but nowadays the play areas have soft surfaces, our children are not made of delicate substances they bounce back, scraped knees grow back, I often catch a glance at my knees and I have to smile as I have the scars to remember falling and ultimately getting scabby knees, ah, they were the days.

In 1960 I was fifteen and I was six foot tall, so really starting work in short trousers wasn’t really an option, looking back I’m amazed that my school friends and my play pals wore these short trousers all through and every winter, now they get togged up like they’re going to the South Pole , I had a summer coat and a winter coat, it was the same one, a two button fasting jacket but in winter I did turn my collar up and I was wearing my dads shoes when I was twelve, the only winter protection I had was wellingtons, that had R and L stencilled on them so you couldn’t wear them on the wrong feet, I do know that long trousers for schoolboys was forbidden by law during the war and I suppose the wearing of short trousers became the norm until times and fashions changed.