Summer Dressing

Linen, square-cut neckline, hanging straight down from the shoulders with a box pleat front and back, and a low belt just above the hips, loosely tied. I brought one in cream and one dark green, self-indulgently old fashioned, particularly in the above the ankle but below the knee length, with sleeves that reach to the elbow but can be cuffed back to just above. It was a private joke, a bow to the heat of summer on the central European plain, the long, dreary afternoons in novels about girls who have lost the chance to live independently and confuse drawing and watercolours, piano and a good education, the finding of a husband when the field has been harrowed by war, with knowing and feeling.

All those novels were written by men. The dress, symbolic of the subjugated girl, is really the only defence against this heat and dust (and looks good on women, not just girls). I've even added the sun hat with the wide, trailing-at-the-back, brim. And the plain, lawn straight slip beats the elasticated grip that welts the body in the torture chamber of modernity. Those girls were in charge of the first and most important aspect of their lives; all the present day talk of being in control of one's own body is arrant nonsense on a summer afternoon in Potsdam without a linen dress and accoutrements. Even the babies have parasols.

Agonised in tight stretch trousers, or shorts, strappy tops cutting into red hot shoulders, slimy with sun lotion and buzzing with midges, red in the face, with hair too short to tie smoothly back flopping on faces sticky with sweat, thongs adhering, they pass through the avenues, today's girls and women, complete anachronisms.

And I bet they can't play the piano either.