My Haight-Ashbury hippie skirt

I like to think I could have been a hippie. I mean I was born in 1965 but my father was well into his 40s and on to his second marriage so maybe I should have been born a lot earlier.

I'm fascinated by the protests and the ideals, the hope, the music, the fashion, the medicine and the magic.

I vaguely even remember real hippies making headbands out of daisy chains one day when I was at the beach with my Mum. I was about three or four so that memory fits with the era.

Anyway, all of this is a roundabout way of explaining how I found myself in a Haight-Ashbury thrift shop in downtown San Francisco eight years ago.

There I was, all the way from sunny Brisbane, Australia, intrigued as I browsed racks and racks of some pretty fantastic clothes, neatly arranged according to era, size and color.

My eyes were almost immediately drawn to a gorgeous, red-wine-colored suede skirt and ... bonus, matching colored silk lining for a paltry US$14.

What? There must be some mistake, I thought, screwing up my eyes and looking again.

Nope, just US$14 for this thrifty treasure.

As if in slow-motion, my hand stretched eagerly forward to pluck this jewel when the spell was rudely and abruptly broken by someone else's hand snatching it away first.

Oh no! I spun around to see who the hand belonged to and came face-to-face with a rather imperious-looking teen who shouted: "Gran, Gran this is it, I've found my fancy dress skirt!"

"Fancy dress?," I sputtered in disgust, "Fancy dress!"

"I'm sorry, and just WHO might you be?" she said, smoothing her perfectly straightened long blonde hair.

"Just someone who badly wants this skirt," I blurted out in a ridiculous way. I felt like the guy in the poker game who just dropped his cards to reveal a dud hand when the stakes were at their highest and everyone was still in the game.

Before I had time to say another word, Miss Self-Entitled had whisked said skirt to the cashier's counter with a bedraggled, tired-looking, older woman in her slipstream. Her long-suffering "Gran" I assumed.

"Oh no you don't," I said running ahead of them both and blocking their paths to the cash desk. I am six feet tall so I'm pretty good at filling a space if I wave my arms around a bit. The demented ostrich act worked if only to slow their pace.

"You see I love this skirt for what it represents, a time when people were happy and free and actually believed that together we could make a better world. It's ... it's ... like what John Lennon was singing about in 'Imagine'. You've heard the song, surely? I have to have it. I was born to have this skirt!"

But my pathetic attempt to appeal to her higher self crashed and burnt disastrously.

"EXCUSE ME but I don't have all day," she drawled, "Could you please MOVE?"

Defeated, I stepped to one side. My protestations had by this time drawn a bit of a crowd and I could see my husband making a desperate cut throat gesture in the background.

Forlornly, I watched as the youngster turned to granny to pay but ... wait ... by some miracle, gran was not cooperating. Instead, she was looking straight at me.

In the hazy light of the thrift shop, bathed in a stream of glorious, afternoon sunshine, the older lady was suddenly not old anymore.

Her eyes sparkled bright green under several rows of indigo false eyelashes and her grey hair had somehow grown waist-length and was swishing a healthy strawberry blonde.

In place of her dowdy cardigan, she was sporting a tasseled Jimi Hendrix-style jacket over a tiny, white crocheted, halter-neck top.

Around her svelte waist was a huge, gorgeous, multi-strand belt fastened by a bright silver and mother-of-pearl-inlaid buckle.

And all of this fabulous ensemble atop ... you guessed it ... a long, red-wine-colored suede skirt and high, wedged sandals.

"Melanie, let the nice Australian lady have the skirt. I saw some much better ones just over there," the older woman said, gesturing towards the back of the store while at the same time winking at me and handing me my prize.

"REALLY, where?" Melanie shrieked and, without a second glance at me, or the skirt, darted off in the direction indicated by her trusty nan.

"Thank you," I mouthed as I rushed to the cashier.

Old-looking again, gran simply smiled and followed in the trail of her peripatetic charge.

And that's how I came to own my beautiful, fully lined, red suede skirt. To this day, it never fails to draw a compliment whenever I wear it.