A lot of things had not yet been discovered in the seventies. There was no Internet, no cell phones and no Ipods. There were also no small sizes. Here was a world — hip and cool in every way — that failed to recognize the needs of the smaller person.

I was a hip and cool person in the seventies. I was also small, smaller than the smallest jean size. This meant that, though I WAS cool, I did not look it. When Oxford bags came into fashion my pants were almost as wide around the waist as they were around my ankles. I could turn around in my cool pair of brown oxfords and still have them facing front. This was disconcerting for someone who wanted to look as cool as she felt.

There were several ways that I tried to compensate for the cruel way that seventies fashion swam and bagged around me. My first attempt was to tackle the hair that was as straight as the hair on everyone at Woodstock on that fateful rocking weekend way back when.

Long, lank hair, parted in the middle was in, that is true, but it didn’t make you any more substantial when all you were was something that roamed around independently in your own little oxford bag land. I decided to do the Afro thing. My mother, who was a frustrated stylist, was thrilled. She had three daughters and whenever she lost sight of the meaning of life she always liked to approach us with a pair of scissors like some strange apparition in an Alfred Hitchcock movie.

The perm was branching out for my mum. We went out and bought the box together. When you’re sixteen in the seventies and you decide to get a perm there’s no such thing as delayed gratification.

The box smelt nothing like the putrid lotion inside but the agonizing bonding my mum and I went through that afternoon was worth every grueling minute. Suddenly I was something out of Hair. I felt that I should be opening my arms wide and singing Aquarius at the top of my unremarkable voice.

The first person I wanted to impress was my newly acquired boyfriend. My mother was kind enough to drop me off outside his house. She was humble and kind of proud of her latest style triumph. We were both eager to see what kind of an impact I was going to have.

By some sort of trick of fate my boyfriend was out on the pavement with his family when we drew up. He was wearing a pair of tight bellbottoms, the cheap kind from a disreputably uncool discount store, with a tight T-shirt that showed off his unpretentious but impressive musculature.

I had changed out of the depressing Oxford bags and was now dressed in a long smocky, flowing granny print dress. It was meant to complete the picture. I was sure I’d seen someone in the cast of Hair wearing something similar in one of my mum’s magazines.

When I stepped out of the car they started laughing. I didn’t even notice for some time. I was so sure that it was the sound of adulation I was totally unprepared for ridicule. Apparently the combination of my long smock, my new Afro and my small stature created the impression of a sweet granny approaching them. They thought this was funny because on some deep subconscious level they must have known it was me. I don’t like to think they would laugh at any sweet old lady that passed them on the street.

Fortunately I was so convinced of my newly acquired coolness that I failed to ignore them for the rest of my life.  This was good because thirty years on, that skinny unfashionable kid is the father of my own skinny unfashionable kids.

The other desperate measure I employed to move on up and into seventies’ fashion was to wear platforms with my Oxfords. My mother would hem my pants about a foot longer than my actual legs, I would step into my considerable platforms, fluff out my afro and I was, as long as I could keep the waist of my pants from falling down, a doyen of fashion. No-one needed to know that my proportions were entirely illusory. No-one needed to know that I was so far removed from the surface of the earth that each step I took was dangerously approximate.

Needless to say I must have stepped carefully enough because I am still here and so are my favorite pair of Oxfords. Sometimes when the children have lost their senses of humor I wear them just to get a bit of a laugh. Sadly the waist not only fits, it constricts my breathing!