A letter from a reader

At 64, I had spent forty summers rolling my trouser legs up at the beach, and one side was always halfway down my shin

The only writing I do these days is my name in texta on the bottom of every dish that goes out to a church lunch, and half of those dishes have still not come home. I am not a writer, and telling other women what to wear is not something I go in for.

But three women asked me about a pair of trousers on the causeway at Victor Harbor in the middle of October, and one of them had walked behind me the whole way across just to look at my hems. So I am writing it down once, properly.

Forty summers of rolled up trousers

I am not a shorts woman. I gave up shorts around the time my knees started looking like Graham's. And a skirt at the beach is just asking the wind to make a fool of you. So for forty summers it has been long trousers, rolled up at the bottom.

You know how it goes. Two turns in the car park, a third one when you see the water. By the time you get down onto the sand one leg has unrolled itself round your ankle and the other is up near your knee, and there is a wet hem slapping your shin all afternoon. Every so often you bend down and fix them, and five minutes later you are bending down again.

Graham says I look like I am going out after pipis. I went back through the holiday photos once, and he is not wrong. In every single one, you can tell which beach it was by which leg had fallen down.

One leg up, one leg down, and a damp hem slapping my ankle. That was every summer holiday for forty years.

In the end I stopped walking down to the water. I sat on the towel with the bag and minded everybody's thongs.

Then I saw Noeline's turn ups

Noeline and I do water aerobics at the Epping pool on a Tuesday, and afterwards a few of us have a cuppa at the café by the entrance. One morning in September she came out of the change rooms in a pair of white trousers that stopped just above her ankle, with a neat turned up cuff at the bottom, perfectly even on both legs.

I asked her who did her turn ups. She said, nobody, love, they come like that. Then she took her phone and her car keys out of the side pockets and put them on the table, and I realised she had not brought a handbag at all.

I ordered mine that evening, in the blue.

They are called the Sophia, and they are from Thompson Sydney, a small Australian boutique Noeline has been quietly buying from for a while. The legs are relaxed and straight, not wide and not tight, and they stop just above the ankle with a neat turned up cuff that is already done for you. There is a side pocket at each hip, so the phone and the keys come with you and the handbag can stay home.

They come in six colours, white, grey, blue, black, purple and light green. Noeline has the white. I went for the blue because it looked like the water at Shelly Beach on a good day, and because I know what I am like with white.

The causeway at Victor Harbor

Graham and I had a week down on the Fleurieu in the middle of October, in a little cottage at Encounter Bay. Graham's one plan for the week was the horse tram out to Granite Island, the old double decker one that a big Clydesdale pulls along the causeway. It was full by the time we got there, so we walked across beside it.

It was a blowy day with the tide up, and every so often a wave would hit the side and the spray would come over and lie in puddles along the planks. Graham had rolled his good chinos up for the walk. One side came down at the very first puddle, and he did the rest of the causeway with one wet leg, muttering.

Mine stayed exactly where they were. Dry hems, both sandals showing, both hands free for the railing.

At the tram stop on the island end, while Graham went to say hello to the horse, a woman from Mount Compass asked me where they were from. Then the young girl in the kiosk asked, while she was handing over our ice creams. And then a woman called Janice, who had been walking behind us the whole way across, came up and said, I have been watching your hems since the car park. Yours are dry and mine are soaked.

Janice and I sat on the bench by the kiosk and compared trouser legs. Hers were rolled three times and still dripping. She took a photo of my cuff with her phone, very close up, as if she was going to have them copied.

Graham, wringing out the bottom of his chinos, wanted to know how come mine stayed up. I told him what Noeline told me. They come like that.

What Graham said on the walk back

We walked back across the causeway in the late afternoon, with the sun on the water. Graham was quiet for a bit, which is never a good sign, and then he said, you know, that is the first beach photo of you in forty years where both legs match.

He had been taking them on his phone the whole way across. He is not a photographer. He holds a phone the way he holds a shifting spanner. But he got one of me walking out over the water with my hand in my pocket, and both cuffs exactly where they should be.

Three things I have learned since

One. It was never my rolling. For forty years I thought my trousers fell down because I rolled them badly. It turns out they were just the wrong trousers. These come turned up, and they stay that way.

Two. Pockets are a kind of freedom. I walked across that causeway with my phone and the cottage keys in my pockets and my hands free. I held the railing. I held Graham's ice cream while he wrung himself out. I did not once go looking for my handbag.

Three. A bit of ankle is no crime. At 64 I had got it into my head that ankles were for younger women. A cropped trouser and a decent pair of sandals look tidy, and they keep you out of the wet.

About the price

I sat behind a doctors' surgery front desk for thirty years and saw a great many invoices, so I will tell you straight, the price made me suspicious.

The Sophia is $48.95. It was $98.00.

My first thought was that at that money the cuffs would be a sad little fold that fell open by morning tea. They are not. They sit flat and even, the way Noeline's did, and the legs hang straight.

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 Willunga had written, “I have rolled my trousers up at the beach my whole life and never once got them even. These came done. My daughter asked if I had them taken up.” That was the one that decided it for me.

I have since ordered the white as well. Janice, I am told, has ordered two.

What I would tell you if we were friends

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

If you are going anywhere near the water this summer, and you already know you will be hitching up one trouser leg in the car park, give it ten minutes of an evening. There are twenty three styles in the summer trouser collection, straight legs, wide legs, all sorts of colours, and you only need the one pair that does the job.

Not because a pair of trousers will change your life. It will not. But I walked all the way out over the sea at Victor Harbor and back without bending down once, and I had not done that in forty years.

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

Forty summers of rolling them up. It turns out somebody could have just done it for me.

Dianne