A letter from a reader

At 64, I had spent forty years handing my phone, my keys and my glasses to my husband, because none of my good dresses had a single pocket

I spent thirty years behind the front desk of a medical centre, and in all that time I never once left the house without a pen in my pocket. Work trousers have pockets. Cardigans have pockets. It was only when I retired and started wearing nice dresses again that I noticed where everything had gone.

It had gone into Graham.

My phone, my reading glasses, the car keys, a hanky, the little packet of mints for the grandkids. For forty years, every time we went anywhere I looked half decent, all of it went into my husband's shorts. He walks around like a kangaroo with a full pouch, and he has never once complained, which is the only reason I put up with it for so long.

Then, on the train up to Kuranda a couple of weeks ago, three women asked me about a dress, and I have been meaning to write it down ever since. So here it is.

How it happens

Nobody decides to give their handbag to their husband. It creeps up on you.

You buy a pretty dress for a lunch. It has no pockets, because pretty dresses mostly do not, so you take a handbag. Then you are at the lunch with a plate in one hand and a glass in the other and the handbag sliding off your shoulder, and your husband says give it here, and the phone goes in his pocket. It is easier. And easier becomes the way you do things.

The trouble is that when the grandkids do something worth a photo, your phone is in somebody else's shorts on the other side of the room. When you want your glasses for the menu, you have to send a search party. You stop being a woman who has her own things, and you do not even notice.

Di, I am not your handbag. I am a retired plumber. I have my own things to carry.

That was Graham, last Christmas, when I asked for my phone for the fourth time during the carols. He was joking. Mostly.

Then Carol pulled out her phone

What changed my mind was Carol, who I worked with at the practice for twenty years. We had lunch at her place in the spring, and she was in a lovely floral dress, and halfway through she slipped her hand into her skirt and pulled out her phone to show me the new grandbaby. Out of her dress. Just like that.

I said, Carol, where did that come from? She said, Di, they make them with pockets now. Where have you been? She told me it was from a small Australian boutique called Thompson Sydney, and I ordered mine that evening, about a week before Graham and I flew up to Cairns.

The one I chose is called the Mariana. It is a deep navy covered in little white petals, some of them gathered into tiny flowers and some scattered loose, so from across a room it just reads as navy and white and neat. Up close it is a very pretty print.

It has a wide, simple round neckline that sits nicely on the collarbones, and sleeves that come to the elbow with a little turned cuff, which is exactly where I like a sleeve to stop. The bodice is fitted without being tight, and from the waist the skirt falls in soft pleats to the middle of the calf. Nothing clings and nothing pinches.

And it has two proper pockets, one in each side seam. You cannot see them when your hands are out, so the skirt hangs clean. But they are deep enough for a phone, and when I put my hands in them I stand differently. I do not quite know how to explain it, except that I stop wondering what to do with my arms.

What happened on the train

We were staying at Palm Cove for a week of warm weather before the Sydney summer starts in earnest. On the Wednesday we caught the old scenic railway up the range from Cairns to Kuranda, the one with the timber carriages that winds up through the rainforest past the waterfalls. It was twenty-nine degrees and the windows were all down. I wore the Mariana with my flat tan sandals, and in the right-hand pocket I had my phone and in the left my glasses.

Three women asked me about the dress before we got to the top. The first was a woman called Cheryl, across the aisle, up from Atherton with her sister, who asked when the train stopped at the falls and I took my phone out of my pocket to take a photo myself, for the first time in about forty years. The second was the young woman who came through the carriage with the drinks trolley. The third was Cheryl's sister, who wanted to know if the pockets were real or just pretend ones, which is apparently a thing.

They are real. I showed her. She put her hand in to check.

What I noticed more than the compliments was that I forgot about Graham. I mean that kindly. I did not have to find him to get my glasses for the little guidebook, and he did not have to stand next to me all day like a coat rack. He sat by the window and watched the gorge and said it was the first holiday in years where his shorts had not been pulling at his belt.

At Kuranda we walked the rainforest boardwalk, and I took my own photos of the falls, and I bought the grandkids a fridge magnet each, and I paid for my own ice cream with the card out of my own pocket. It is a small thing. It did not feel small.

Three things I have learned since

One. Pockets are not a small thing. I thought I was buying a dress. I was buying my own phone back, and my own glasses, and my own afternoon.

Two. A good dark print does the work for you. Navy with a little white in it looks smart at a lunch and sensible on a train, and I did not need a scarf or a cardigan to make it look like something.

Three. You do not need a handbag for a day out. I took one to Kuranda out of habit. It stayed in the hotel room, and nothing bad happened.

About the price

I will be honest, the price is what made me suspicious.

The Mariana is $75.95. It was $152.00.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because I have paid more than that for a handbag I mostly carried around so Graham did not have to.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is nobody in the middle taking a cut, and they run a spring sale to move the season's stock. I read the reviews before I ordered, the way I imagine you are doing now. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. Not the suspiciously perfect five you see on some websites, which if anything made me trust it more. One woman from Mareeba had written, “My husband has carried my phone for thirty-five years. I wore this to our grandson's school concert and he did not know what to do with his hands.” That was the one that decided it for me.

Carol, I am told, has since bought another one in a different print. Jenny from over the road, who has never once passed a remark on what I have on in nearly thirty years, watched me pull my keys out of my dress at the letterbox and said, Well. Look at you, all self-sufficient. Then she asked for the name of the shop.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sitting on the back verandah with a cuppa and you asked me, this is what I would say.

If you have the Cup, a holiday or the Christmas lunches coming up this summer, and you already know you will spend the day looking for somewhere to put your phone, it is worth ten minutes of an evening to go and have a look. They have a whole collection of these pocket dresses, in all sorts of prints.

Not because a dress will change your life. It will not. But there is something about walking around a warm afternoon with your hands in your own pockets and your own things on you, looking nice, that I had quietly given up on. I would not want you to give up on it too.

Two practical things. The spring sale is on now and the middle sizes go first. And with summer and the Christmas lunches coming, I would not leave it too long.

Forty years of my husband carrying my handbag in his shorts. I went up to Kuranda with my hands in my own pockets.

Dianne