Daft Old Duffer returns. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
I always find it difficult to cope with any of those shops were goods are displayed on shelves and racks. My normal procedure in such places is to wander about long enough for assistants – and sometimes other shoppers – to begin regarding me warily, then ask someone, rather sarcastically, where they’ve hidden the item I seek.
Usually to be told I’m standing next to it.
So the prospect of hieing myself along to one of those department store warrens and there finding myself a complete new outfit was not one I was happy about.
It’s been a while
The last time I had done any serious clothes buying was, many, many years ago, when I was a young buck about town. And in those ancient times re-cladding involved dark places of a distinctly mahogany flavour, wherein discreetly servile gentlemen persuaded me out of the entirely unsuitable garment my heart was set on and despatched me back to the world in something grey and appropriate. Or blue and appropriate. Or brown and appropriate.
Being a young buck about town wasn’t a condition that applied for very long however. And since becoming shapeless and appropriate myself, I have tended to accrue garments in two more casual ways. a) Not very often and b) by accident.
Closing down clobber
The trio of sweatshirts that take it in turns to accompany me everywhere, for eg, were found hanging outside a gent’s outfitters that was festooned with ‘closing down. Last day of sale’ banners.
My drawer of t–shirts came from a French hypermarket which had obviously bought up a mammoth job lot sight unseen and were desperate to get rid of them. And my socks from a French bloke wandering a market bearing a large sack of them and eager to let them go for copper coin.
All entirely to my satisfaction. I never discovered why the sweatshirts were banned for sale outside the shop rather than in with the rest, the t–shirts proved perfectly acceptable if worn beneath the very same sweatshirts, and the somewhat strangely shaped socks kept my feet warm – and who could see them under my jeans and motorbike boots?
Time for some new threads
But now nemesis. With whole drawers filled with tat even I had grown ashamed to be seen in, and thus with an entire top to toe outfit to buy, I ventured forth, choosing good old, nice and safe, entirely familiar, Marks and Sparks.
I should have known better. Even the blooming name had been changed, ‘Your M&S’ indeed!
And where were all the rows and rows of counters, with nice smiley assistants standing behind, and shirts and pullovers and undies laid out so you could see them, just by wandering about?
All change
Instead I was confronted by a confusion, an untracked forest, of racks and ledges and shelves stretching further than the eye could see.
There was not even a pretence of logic to the sprawl, as far as I could tell. Having stumbled upon a blue jeans plantation I tried to use it as a reference point, somewhere to home in on when I got lost. But when I did so I found I had homed in on an entirely different crop of blue jeans and ended up more confused than before
I know it’s been sixty years and more, but what sort of excuse is that? Why can’t they leave things alone?
