You can’t imagine the effect clothes-shopping has on me. I would genuinely rather wear a “Millwall are Wankers” T-shirt in a Bermonsey pub when they’re playing at home than go shopping to buy a pair of trousers. It’s beyond dislike, there is a physical reaction much like phobias that people have – I get a tightening around the chest, my heart races and I can’t think straight.
So I don’t. Consequently, when it’s time to go to a job interview, wedding, funeral or anywhere else where different rules apply, I’m fucked. Yesterday Michele made me try on my suit. Of course the trousers don’t fit very well. They do up though.”But they don’t look right on the bum”, Michele told me. Well to me, trousers just don’t look right. If it isn’t jeans and a t-shirt it looks wrong. But Michele wasn’t having any of it, and offered to go to Lewisham to buy me some trousers – knowing the disasterous effect that me going out to buy them would have on us both. Pointless, I thought, because even if you can find a pair that fit my waist, the legs will be too long. But off she went.
Bugger me, she came back with two pairs of perfectly fitting black trousers. We plumped for the Primark ones (12 quid!) because despite having 80s-style pleats and turn-ups they fitted better. So today, the day of Adrian’s wedding, I can go along without causing too much embarrasment to the assembly.

Anyway – now it’s zero hour, the horrors of straight-clothes are all flooding back. I must have spent 10 minutes irning one side one bloody side of my (cotton) shirt. Jesus Christ, do all these people you see in suits up town have to do that shit every day ? Why ? What is the point ? If you wore black cotton t-shirts, you would just have to wash them, hang them up to dry and the wrinkles just fall out… You mugs!
And What are ties for ? The only purpose I can see is to conceal the shirt buttons. Perhaps in days long passed shirt buttons were considered rude or offensive in some way ? Perhaps they suggested that underneath the shirt was….NUDITY. Yuck! Cover those filthy tools of satan lest our minds may wander into the realms of filth at their very sight.
I can’t wait to get back into my normal clothes – and I haven’t even changed yet…