The twenty five year clothes shop

In September we’ll be celebrating twenty five years of not killing each other. Twenty five years ago we celebrated the start of the adventure by boarding the P&O flagship “Oriana”, and galavanting off around the mediterranean for a couple of weeks. Twenty five years later we’re repeating the escapade - only on a different ship, and for quite a bit longer this time.

You know that one where you’re looking in the holiday website, and you think “oh - this cruise goes here, here, and here”, or “that cruise goes there, there, and there” - and you keep scrolling, and you keep scrolling - and then you see the cruise that goes “here, here, and here, and there, there, and there”. And you figure out it’s still two years away - so you ask your employer if such a thing is even possible - and they say yes - and then suddenly you’re not only saving for a month long escapade - you’re also facing two years without a proper holiday.

Yes, we’ve had the odd city break - but we’ve not really been “away away” for two years now - and given the mayhem and madness that has happened during that time - some of which will never be written here - let’s just say we’re looking forward to it now.

The holiday of a lifetime that was two years away is suddenly six weeks away, and is throwing an entirely different set of challenges at us - or me, in particular.

You know the one where you only tend to buy clothes once in a blue moon, and then wear the clothes until they fall apart? I’m right at the “falling apart” bit with most of the clothes I own - and apparently ordering shirts from Amazon causes your other half to frown quite a lot.

The last suit I bought was for a wedding in Ireland - the marriage of a co-worker. FIFTEEN YEARS AGO. It’s still hanging in our wardrobe at home - squashed between similarly aged clothes that haven’t been worn for similar amounts of time. In my head I think it’s probably fine. It won’t be. And that’s why we went shopping today.

After spending the last five years quietly amassing a horde that Smaug the dragon would have been proud of (or at least might have nodded approvingly towards before laughing behind my back), I went shopping at an “outlet village” today, and spent a good chunk of it.

I’ve never set foot in a Hugo Boss store before today. I was in the middle of looking down my nose at a rack of suit jackets thinking “no clothes are worth this much money” when a studious young man with a faintly European accent suggested my exact shoulder and chest measurement purely by observing me for a few seconds. Before I knew it one of my hands was being guided into a sleeve, then the other, and after a shrug of my shoulders I caught my other half smiling. I walked to a mirror and took a look.

So there IS a difference between a Marks and Spencer suit, and a Hugo Boss suit. And perhaps my other half’s frustration with me always buying clothes that are “good enough” had some basis in truth. I ended up smiling at myself in the mirror - begrudgingly.

I will also admit to inhaling quite spectacularly when the total came up on the checkout.

It’s not that I don’t like spending money - it’s just that I don’t like wasting it on things that aren’t really needed. And while I hear the sage advice of so many telling me that it’s better to own a few really good quality items of clothing, rather than a wardrobe full of rubbish - it’s still difficult (for me at least) to spend more than I might on things that don’t really matter (to me at least).

I’m probably coming across as a proper curmudgeon that persists in jeans with holes and worn-out t-shirts. While uncomfortably close to the truth, it isn’t the whole story - I promise you. The truth is more along the lines of I don’t tend to spend money on myself. It’s not that I don’t have the money - I work hard - I am luckier than most (read: the harder I work, the luckier I get) - it’s just that I don’t want for much.

Since the girls came into our lives about twenty years ago, everything got funnelled towards them. Given their background, it was only natural to want to give them the world - and we tried. We almost broke ourselves in the process (actually, we DID brake ourselves at one point), but we tried.

Now the girls are grown up, earning money, and STILL living at home (don’t laugh), the story has changed somewhat. We won’t talk about one of our girls creating a miniature version of herself either.

I don’t really know where I’m going with this.

Perhaps I’m trying to justify spending money on myself for the first time in twenty five years. By the time we got in the car to come home I had bought a suit, shirts, dress shoes, shorts, trousers, running shoes, and more.

Apparently tomorrow I have to empty two thirds of my wardrobe upstairs into bin liners for fabric recycling. I also have to arrange a skip for next weekend - to empty half the contents of the house into - twenty five years of accumulated “lets not throw this away just yet - it might come in handy one day”.

The shopping list for the holiday isn’t finished yet.

There are several formal nights aboard the ship. Formal means dinner jacket, wing collar shirt, and dickie-bow tie. Now I know my exact suit measurements, I’m scouting out online retailers for a dinner jacket that’s “good enough” to survive the holiday, and perhaps a night out with friends where they get to laugh at me wearing said dinner jacket.

Who knows - perhaps I can talk them into dressing up too? We could re-stage Casino Royale at home and play cards to win the last piece of chocolate brownie.

Worth knowing - I’ve never played cards for money. I’ve never played the national lottery either. Or smoked. Or taken drugs (well... discounting alcohol, paracetamol, ibuprofen, or the steroids last year when my lungs tried to stop working).

Anyway.

I’m rambling now.

I guess the most fun part of today was people watching. Not only the people wandering around the shops trying things on - also the staff. The assistant in Hugo Boss was wonderful - quiet, unassuming - and seemingly lacking any prejudice. I was wearing worn out shorts and t-shirt that has seen better days. There was no way he could have known I had walked in to spend a small fortune on a suit. Perhaps people that look at suits rarely do so for fun. It’s not the sort of thing you would do without needing to buy one, is it?

In contrast, the final shop we visited was “Super Dry” - the faux Japanese fashion brand. The arrestingly beautiful young girl on the checkout had the best “resting bitch face” I’ve ever seen (also worth noting that I have three daughters who practice their disinterest skills very regularly). No hello, no please, no thank you - just the minimum interaction required to process the transaction then move on to the next victim. Wow. She’ll go far.

Anyway.

We’re home now.

My twenty five year clothes shop is done. Back to ordering shirts from Amazon, and risking the wrath of my other half.