The Clothing Debate Part II

Image: Senior Money Memos

I’m struggling to sleep again. The last two nights I was up after midnight in the knowledge I had to get up at 5am for work. As time dragged on, I started to feel the pressure and became more aware I was losing time and couldn’t push my time of rising any further back. The more I thought about it, the more awake I became. In the end my estimate was about two and a half hours of sleep each night. Not good.

Getting out of bed wasn’t so much of a problem in the end, though. It was the staying during the day awake bit that has become the problem.

My post on Sunday about Generation-X for Clothes seems to have stirred up some interesting comments. I’m glad I’m not middle-aged (Devon) because I don’t feel it. I suppose I feel about 20’ish then I look in the mirror and realise I’ve got a gut and I shaved all my hair off to beat the tide ten years ago. (That was a great day, by the way).

Robert LaFrance gave me the great idea of wearing a suit jacket with a bedazzled T-shirt underneath—God knows I’ve got plenty of them! Stevie Ward basically told me to stick what I’m doing with my trusty Madness t-shirt and Harrington jacket, and after reading Devon’s comment I had to go and look up “metrosexual” to confirm I’m definitely not one. I can be a bit camp sometimes, but not a “metro”.

In the end I’m going to leave it up to Gail after she offered to do it for me. She asked to be entrusted to buy me clothes (if I gave her the cash first) and she is going to improve my image one night this week without me even being there. She said after I accepted: “this is a big responsibility, but I’ll give it a go.” Fingers crossed.

The last time I went actively clothes shopping for proper clothes was in River Island in Glasgow in 1992. That store doesn’t exist any more, I don’t live in Glasgow any more, I don’t have a 12 stone build any more, and I don’t have a hair line any more. Actually, I tell a lie, I bought a new suit last August, does that count?

A friend outed himself in the staff canteen yesterday. He’d arrived to work in a pink shirt—nothing odd in that because I often wear a nifty pink tartan number myself—then during the pasta Bolognese course, and in front of all five of us, he suddenly announced he “had finally come to terms with his homosexuality.”

A moment of silence ensued, shocked awe rippled all around the table. Then we realised most of us had actually seen it coming and had often wondered how long it would be until this day came.

Now we know the truth, though, nothing much has really changed. Good on him, if it makes him feel better. The rest of us still think the same of him as we did before: nice guy, good at his job, but now we say of him: “would be happier if he found a decent man.”

It’s chucking it down in Edinburgh today—has been all morning—which is great because I’m going to be spending the night in the pub anyway so no chance of getting soaked like I did on the way into work.

Tally ho!