Kate Livingstone: Ripped clothing used to be for bin

Most of us have known each other from schooldays with the others from when we all started working and having money to spend socialising.

Thursdays at the Maddox, Friday night at the cinema, Saturday at the Maniqui and the weekend rounded off with a trip to the Leapark or the Cladhan on a Sunday.

How we managed to drag ourselves in to work on a Monday morning I’ll never know!

But we certainly did – because that was when we used to plan our next weekend.

Sometimes we even ventured outwith the Falkirk boundaries even making it as far as La Fabrique in Bo’ness and on really special occasions, Buster Browns in Edinburgh.

One of my colleagues has just read this over my shoulder and is now laughing out loud saying that I’m giving my age away, but hey, it’s my past. And I’m sure there are lots of people out there who will remember it – they’re still going about but now I spot them in the supermarket or the garden centre ...

But the scary thing is, it doesn’t seem that long ago.

Almost as important as where to spend the weekend was what to wear.

A trip to Falkirk town centre would find us looking for a new outfit in Chelsea Girl, Wrygges, Avanti, Klaze or one of the other little boutiques that would spring up for a while.

The really talented ones or who had mums with nimble fingers, would head to Remnant Kings to buy material to produce their very own designer gear.

But one thing that we most certainly not wear was something with holes or a ragged hem. But it seems people are prepared to pay good money for ‘ripped’ clothing!

There I was clothes shopping with Emma at the weekend and she is showing me all these different coloured jeans with huge rips in them and asking what I thought.

“You can’t be serious?” I spluttered.

“You’re prepared to pay good money for something that looks like you’ve already put your knee through it!”

“Mum,” she hissed, looking around to see if anyone had heard me. “It’s fashionable nowadays. That’s what people are wearing.”

With a vision of someone sitting in some factory cutting holes in a pair of jeans that had just been sewn or ripping the hem on a pair of short, I said those words: “Well really Emma, in my day ...”