The look of the past II

After last weeks post well one thing that does come into play is the length and styling of modern day boys or mens shorts specifically sports shorts.

Virtually from the 1970's right though to 1990's the lengths of football shorts, athletic shorts usually of the high cut sort and cotton tennis shorts tended to be short.

For reason's best known to themselves, some suggest as a "prank", a London football club adopted long just on the knee shorts at the start of one season and this became a craze within the Football Association and this filted into shorts for boxing, gym wear and so on.

This has implications when it comes to remaking that look I talked about last week as these almost as long as great great grannies bloomers shorts are everywhere!

There is an answer however and that there are PUMA Unisex Gestrickte Shorts Teamgoal Shorts WMNS which are available from the Puma store on Amazon which aren't branded for women but are worn more more by WSL players in their leagues.

These are quite a bit shorter but still "decent", have the tie to adjust drawstring we all know and go upto 3xl (38 inch) waist.

Worn with say a white or yellow t shirt or polo shirt and ankle socks they do work out well.

Sometimes it's good parts of the past have gone

 Slowly recovering here so with any lucky by next week i should be back on my feet again.

As might be inferred by that I'm on enforced rest here more able than usual to be decending very much in time with the rituals of Tie fastening, getting your socks on and supported neatly which is as well as in many respects I love that older, less tech driven and less planned  boyhood with play and a cheeky grin.

That said not everything from then stands critical examination today.

Today, smoking for adults is very much a taboo thing with lots of restrictions where one might while back then my family smoked around me, the parents of friends who gave me lifts smoked in the car and many places we went into like cafés, fish and chip shops and public houses reeked of smoke.

As kids we had candy shaped like cigarettes with pink tips and yes we had them in our mouths trying too look sophesticated pretending to smoke. Today they're gone.

Toys like those Hanna-Barbara cartoon characters Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound and co were made to invite children to practise lighting up and enjoy watching the smoke drift.

It seems incredible really such habits known to be harmful were being encouraged in us in underhand ways - I hung out with the smokers and was only detered by the threat of a spanking if caught - and while it's fanciful to look back at things as if everything in the past was fine, the exposure to and encouragment of smoking to us a boys and girls is something I'm glad to see has gone.

The long and short bite of it

This weekend I would think is a bit better for not having the snow storms and the minus degree c temperatures although I liked it once it had settled making for great snowballs and snowman building.

It is of course the countdown to Christmas which curiously enough lead to two advent calendars this year, a Paw Patrol one with a colouring book and this that unexpectedly arrived from Dad of all people.  

I quite like white choco, it doesn't seem to give me as many migraines as regular dairy or especially the dark sort.

It appears AP's specially made white lined short trousers commissioned in the late Spring from David Luke are selling so well stocks for certain sizes appear to be close to selling out which does indicate the appeal among the stores users for that lining colour.

Allied that is the whole question around short trouser lengths as those in that exclusive batch are at seven inches which on taller boys still looks more like short trousers rather than say, those of this boy which appear to be touching the top of his knee cap!

Many of modern short trousers tend to be just above or at the knee.

These while a bit longer than some of us wore to me are much more short trousers with a fair bit of skin between the centre of the knee and the leg of them probably around the five to six inch mark.

The only bone of contention I have is those ankle socks which are only suitable for summer,  for the rest of the year at least long socks would make more sense. 

This was how it was when short trousers were uniform items at school, pretty much for the nineteen seventies and early eighties and while for me the pair from AP was taken up to emulate those I wore then and being consistent with remaining that boy today.

For me, it just feels right.

The shorts that belong on the real me.

There has always been a bit of debate around how you "present" your little side when it comes to authenticity and things around uniforms.

You can't deny we are living in 2020 when actual boys have a different range of things they can chose to wear and unlike my generation at the very least you are asked today where with us we got what our Mum's considered "right" on their son.

On the other hand we are boys of and very much informed by that era having this past into present life within but nonetheless running alongside it.

Thus some may adopt styles of today such as polo shirts or sweat shirts which were seen as American casual wear in the 1970's but a bigger bone of contention is around shorts because most boys today who wear them have the on the knee Bermuda length or the combat style.

Like a good number of us I've worn them being the easiest often the cheapest available current shorts you can get and that they are seen more can ease acceptance in more conservatively dressed settings such as the funeral send off with family and friends I was at recently.

The thing is such shorts don't feel actually short as while I dislike dogmatic opinions, for most of us shorts are something we visualize as something those length does stop a bit above the knee.

In some ways they are a half way house out of long trousers and yet as one person said they feel very similar and there's a bigger difference in shorts that are typically an inch over the knee at least.

Then a number of us are a few inches or more shorter than today's older boys and men which was normal in our era meaning the area covered in the legs will differ which is why long trousers have different inside leg options and I'm a short one.

Thus while keeping the odd pair for winter or wider family gatherings I'm moving my standard maximum length down to a six inch length which on me gives a classic 30's to early 60's an inch and a bit above the knee look.

It also happens to be the case those pairs are much better made too including being fully lined.

However I am wearing more as a everyday thing shorter pairs that are just a bit longer by a half inch than what I last wore as a junior school boy because they are in so many respects more authentic of a boy - an adult little boy - of my era and so are what I knew wearing shorts full time to be.

Thus I'll have two pairs in a 4 inch inside leg length that still looks pretty respectable on me and to where people here haven't had a problem with since I did going in public settings such as the Barber's.

Wearing them even compared to the 6 inch ones feels a bit different and I echo the feeling that both are much more akin to what it was like than the current popular longer Bermuda or Cargo styles.

While I am happy to compromise in certain contexts to enable me to wear shorts near enough full time no matter what in 2020, I am much more at one with wearing the shorts I wore as that bio-boy then as a LB now and that is what I will be doing.

I am a boy who looks and feels best in shorter shorts: It is my real authentic standard.

Shoot and kickabout

Last year it was the 50th year of Shoot which like a number of publication scaled down production this century from weekly to monthly before going online only in the last decade

It was geared around a teen boy audience, upper years at Prep school or State Secondary, who loved football which was pretty much all of us at that point  playing at school and any spare moment outside of things like scouts.
In its favour it had real football legends writing for it so it gave good advice on areas of the game,  discussion of rules issues and a breakdown of the weeks action and any international/home nations matches

The quality of writing was second to none which is something some magazines could do with revisiting these days.

And - hurrah - you had posters to take out and put on your bedroom wall, men you could look up to.

Arriving slightly late here which was why it missed the Crimbo post was that 50th Anniversary annual that has a lot of features from the 70's and 80's like that picture of Man U's George Best  who as a Wolves fan I'd have to say at his best was Brilliant (and at his personal life worst makes this boy cry).

Arriving and not altogether unconnected is a pair of vintage Puma Shorts from those days when the teen me played when shorts were short  not like your grannies big bloomers, down to just below the knee.
If past lives are being revisited then to me it makes sense to have a pair of shorts for footie that were of that past when Nylon was king.