O Horror Of Tights

O HORROR OF TIGHTS

And so it came to be that the Goblin Princess Mary and Demon Fiend
Craggs, great companeros that they are, rallied their forces against
the horror of tights. I listened in with a great deal of interest while
Manley gazed speculatively out the window.
In fact, it was I who brought up the subject. I believe I had been
meaning to suggest the possibility of a Waveney Terrace swimsuit
calendar (Manley and I would, naturally, contribute along with the
others,) but in my efforts to approach the subject cautiously so as not
to offend, queried the absence of tights about their spindly lower
halves. This undoubtedly brought about their tirade .
I lost track of the conversation on several occasions due to the
temptation to muse of the impressive size of the harpies' backsides. I
began studying them out of mild curiosity and soon found certain
revelations leaping out at me, to the point where I discovered myself
thinking, "There's a fair helping of meat on them there haunches." I
had always taken it for granted in the past that women's rear ends were
a size up from men's, but never before had it dawned on me just how
significant the difference was. I am beginning to suspect this is a
process of realisation that all men must go through at some point in
their lives.
That aside, I was eager to here of how such flimsy leg decoration could
wreak terror upon these powerful black sorceresses, knowing that I
might well be able to use the knowledge to my advantage some day in the
near future.
"They're rubbish!" flared Craggs, becoming as jagged as she will ever
be. "They make you sweat all the time, and you're always getting
ladders."
"Tights!" hollered Mary. "There's always something amiss with your
tights. I know so many girls who've put their fingers right through
whilst getting up from the loo."
"It's true!" Helen thundered. "Your thumbs always go through when
you're pulling them up. Every time!"
"Ladders?" I enquired with an ignominious air. "Is there nothing that
can stand in their way?"
"You can put nail varnish at the ends to stop them moving," Mary
admitted.
"And they give you thrush apparently!" Helen continued, undeterred.
"And if you bend your knees too much they leave indents."
"In your knees?!?" Manley piped up.
He was promptly ignored, though I quietly conceded his point.
"Then there's the problem with sizes," Mary squeaked onwards. "As a
child, you only have small, medium or large. They either don't fit, or
they're falling round your ankles."
Helen nodded wisely.
"And in the rain, they're like jeans."
"Yes! They stick to your legs and don't dry for ages."
"Tights are the work of the devil," Helen concluded, a statement I
found amusingly ironic since I presume she herself to be a servant of
said resident of heck. "I shall never wear them again."
At this point, the barrage fell into disillusion, as Mary endeavoured,
"If the rains do the walking&;#8230;"
"Rain doesn't walk, Mary!" Helen laughed.
"But you know the raindrops&;#8230;"
And so the Goblin Princess launched into one of her famous explanations
as to where the sense lay behind the utterance she had just uttered, an
utterance that usually confounds the rest of us. To continue with my
theme of animal imagery, which I am thoroughly enjoying (due, in part,
I must confess, to the dismay with which the harpies react to their
beasty metaphors,) Mary does make me think of the robin. Her cheeks
tend to do the old ripe apple glow in her many moment's of both
embarrassment and mirth, much like the garden bird's fiery breast, and
I see her gaze flicker anxiously back and forth across the kitchen,
from Helen to me to Manley to freezer, just as the robin's head will
bolt from one direction to another. That wild nervousness clings to her
even in the summer warmth of familiar company, even when she wields a
cup of hot chocolate, and I find in her voice a sharp, querying quality
that mimics the birdsong. Does the robin sing? I forget, but if it does
I can well imagine sounding like a worrying Mary, beautifully animated
in the throes of despair after losing her purse or her keys yet again,
or resonating like a loud, inebriated Mary, cheerily accusing everyone
she encounters of the malicious theft of said items.