You know how you come across something, a word or an idea, or even a person, that you haven't seen for ages and suddenly it/he/she pops up one, two, three times in the next ensuing days? For me it happens most often with a word I've never encountered before and then do, three times. This is a little different. Last week I was describing garter belts and the gap at the top of the thigh, between the edge of the stocking and the beginning of the underpants, a cold place in a Winnipeg winter. I didn't have a formal name for it (No-Man's Land?). But today I found it. I'm just reading Jane Gardam's latest book, Last Friends, the third in her wonderful trilogy, and I have just read of a court case argued in the past between the two lawyers, each the protagonist of one of the novels. The case was being argued before a judge concerning a poor challenged kid who shovelled dung in a circus and who for kicks would take a long straw and go under the bleachers where he would stick it up through the slats and tickle the private parts of the ladies. As you know, says the narrator, ladies' tights hadn't been invented, "and there were all these pale pink arcs of skin between the stocking-tops and the knickers. Schoolgirls,I believe, used to call the gaps 'smiles' or 'sights'." And the boy was charged for tickling all the smiles. Well! You learn something every day.

You'll find garter belts today in the pages of Victoria's Secret catalogue or in exclusive boutiques that sell sexy lingerie. In my day a garter belt was a hateful thing that strapped around your hips with dangling ribbons with metal fasteners that you hooked to the top of your stockings so they wouldn't fall down. There was a gap at the top of your thighs, bare flesh between the stocking and your underpants, not sexy at all, just cold in the winter. So conscientious mothers like mine made me wear overpants on cold days - lots of those in Winnipeg in the winter. I graduated to garter belts augmented with overpants after I stopped wearing long underwear under black cotton stockings. I think they scarred my psyche. I tell you, pantihose are one of the great inventions of the 20th century. Some things you don't get over. I haven't thought of garter belts for years but I'm not over them. And then to increase your discomfort roughly once a month add to that a sanitary belt - I think that's what they were called - an elasticized belt to go around your pelvis with two catches, front and back, sort of a cross between a paper clip and a hook, designed to anchor the tails of a sanitary napkin and hold it more or less in place to protect your underpants during your period. I'm shuddering Why am I telling you this? You're not there, anyway.