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Then And Now
Jan. 10th, 2024 07:34 am We were in the bank getting some financial things sorted out- and the guy's computer was glitching and it was taking a long time so I entertained myself by studying the blown up, colourised photograph spread across a nearby wall.
It showed the Eastbourne sea front on a sunny day in the summer of 1899. The sea was full of bathing machines, There were horses standing about on the shingle (presumably used to drag the machines about) and their keepers were the only men not wearing jackets. People were strolling along the promenade or sitting on chairs looking out to sea. Only one person was actually in the water and only two or three sitting on the beach. Everybody, but everybody, male and female, was wearing a hat. Many of the women were shading themselves with parasols.
I looked from the photograph to the street outside and asked myself what would most surprise or shock one of these late Victorians if they could step off the wall and out into our reality and decided it wouldn't be the cars- because cars of a sort had been around for over a decade in 1899 and they'd be expecting the technnology to have advanced; no, it would be that women had entirely given up on skirts and were now all- young and old- wearing tousers, jeans or leggings....
It showed the Eastbourne sea front on a sunny day in the summer of 1899. The sea was full of bathing machines, There were horses standing about on the shingle (presumably used to drag the machines about) and their keepers were the only men not wearing jackets. People were strolling along the promenade or sitting on chairs looking out to sea. Only one person was actually in the water and only two or three sitting on the beach. Everybody, but everybody, male and female, was wearing a hat. Many of the women were shading themselves with parasols.
I looked from the photograph to the street outside and asked myself what would most surprise or shock one of these late Victorians if they could step off the wall and out into our reality and decided it wouldn't be the cars- because cars of a sort had been around for over a decade in 1899 and they'd be expecting the technnology to have advanced; no, it would be that women had entirely given up on skirts and were now all- young and old- wearing tousers, jeans or leggings....
