Janet Christie: My Week – 1990s retro style is more fashion than function
I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve bagged a window seat on an East Coast main line train south from Edinburgh so I can enjoy the coastline views of East Lothian, Berwickshire and Northumberland and been delighted by the proximity of train to cliff edge but I’ll be holding onto the edge of my seat after walking from Berwick upon Tweed to Eyemouth this week.
It’s been a while since I was up on this part of the cliffpath but the coastal erosion was plain to see as we picked our way gingerly along the muddy path between wall and precipitous drop to the waves crashing onto the rocks below.
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Hide Ad“Canny view of the kittiwakes and guillemots though,” says Country Girl leaning out over the edge. “A couple of gannets out there. And look, fulmers.”
I can’t. I’m hugging the wall, the high-speed trains whoosing past giving me the full Sharon Osborne look every 20 minutes.
Thanks to a tasting menu of weather - rain, hail, wind and occasional sun - as we trek the 11 mile stretch of path, I squelch into Eyemouth concluding it’s time for a new waterproof coat - the reproofing’s no longer working and the seam tapes have perished.
“Nothing lasts,” I say to Youngest Child, sadly.
“Shame, because retro’s having a moment,” she says. “Your coat looks very 90s. The colours and everything.”
“It is very 90s. 1993 I think.”
“OMG. How long do you expect things to last?”
“I got it to walk the Lairig Ghru before I had any of you. We camped in the snow. I had to have whisky to get to sleep. I thought I was going to die. Happy days.”
A gift, I’m ashamed to say my green and magenta Berghaus Goretax didn’t set me aquiver at the time - I’d rather have had Glasto tickets or been whisked off to a weekend rave - but we’ve walked hundreds, maybe thousands, of miles together, skied, climbed mountains, sheltered from storms. I was probably wearing it when Princess Diana died, when Mandela became president, through news of Afghanistan, Iraq, the tsunami, the arrival of Harry Potter, iPods, YouTube and Facebook, Brexit, all that.
But it’s time for me and my coat to consciously uncouple. What to replace it with? Who to ask? How about Katharine Hay, The Scotsman rural affairs correspondent walking around Scotland carrying her tent, and with whom I rendezvous in the cosy confines of Giacopazzi's cafe in Eyemouth. Surely she knows a thing or two about staying dry. But we’re so busy blethering as I dry out that I forget to ask. My jacket limps on.
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