THE ADVENTURE OF THE BLACK SCARF

I got a scarf for Christmas. In fact I got two. One of them was a perfectly nice one, from British Home Stores or Marks and Spencer or somewhere like that, made from a thin material with a pattern in shades of grey which suits me terribly well and has been used rather a lot in recent weeks and I am rather fond of it. The greyness suits me. It matches my world view, it matches my clothes, and increasingly, it matches my hair. However, I must report that it was not my favourite of the two scarves that I received.

That honour really must go to the other scarf.

The other was hand-made for me by my beloved and is truly a magnificent thing, but so far I’ve been too frightened to wear it in case I spoil it. This is the problem with the things you truly adore. Sometimes you can simply adore them far too much to risk losing them or spoiling them. Philosophically and emotionally, this is probably deeply significant and no doubt speaks volumes about my eccentric personality traits and my deeper displays of angst that you will already be well aware of if you’ve spent any time exploring these pages over the past few months.

It is a wide and lengthy woollen creation in deepest, darkest, softest black. At the moment it remains tassel-free and as to whether it is going to become a tasselled thing is still a hot topic of debate in Blogfordshire Towers, and might also explain why it has not yet adorned my person in the great outdoors.

I fear uneven fading, even in the weak sun of an English winter.

That and, of course, that the weather has yet to cause the thermometer to plummet down towards the levels where such extreme clothing as it and my underused parka become the obvious clothing choices. Strangely, because the scarf itself remained a “work in progress” for some considerable amount of time due in no small part, I suppose, to the monotony of its lack of patterning, and the fact that other, brighter, more exciting projects tended to leap ahead of it in the “stuff to do” list, the last two bleak mid-winters passed without it being able to fulfil its true purpose, but that doesn’t really matter.

Now it can.

Now we are prepared for anything the weather feels like throwing at us.

The story of how this scarf came to be I suppose that you could call it “commissioned” is, I hope, mildly interesting. A couple of years ago I bought a box set of “The Complete Sherlock Holmes” starring Jeremy Brett on shiny disc, and, as it the nature of such things, over the course of a few months, we worked our way through it watching them all, and pretty wonderful it was too, thank you for asking.

After a few episodes, Jeremy Brett started to wear a long, perhaps eccentrically long, black scarf in his outdoor guise and I thought that it looked rather impressive. Much like Alistair Sim’s infamous weighted greatcoat, it added a dynamic to his movements and an interesting aspect to his silhouette. Not to put too fine a point on it, I thought it looked rather “cool!” Now, given that anything that I find “cool!” automatically becomes far less so, and additionally accepting the basic principle that something so “lo-tech” and “retro” is bound not to appeal to anyone else all that much, I thought to myself “I should like a scarf like that!” and thought little more of it.

That is, not until knitting became one of the more regular pastimes in our little abode, but once it became the practical delight it came to be (for various reasons far too complicated and convoluted even for me to go into here), the suggestion that such a thing might be a nice thing to have was tentatively made, and eventually, the wool was bought and the needles started to happily click. Practical skills seem to be something of a joy to learn when older but “da kidz” seem not to be interested in these things when there are video games to be played, so the timing of such desires can be pretty crucial if you want a successful outcome, as indeed I now do.

So now I do have my very own Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes style scarf, and it is something I really feel pleased to have, because sometimes I do have to invoke the spirit of Great Uncle Sherlock in my day-to-day life. Oh, I’ll admit that the “cleverness” gene has failed to make its way down the generations from my fictional ancestor, but, just occasionally, I have to try thinking “outside the box” in my own pale imitation of his genius.

I will arrive at the humble abode of the matriarch of the remains of the Holmes clan and she will exclaim a woeful lament as to the loss of her lifeline to the great outdoors, by explaining to me that she has somehow mislaid the remote manipulation device for her televisualisor. I will investigate every nook and cranny, surface and receptacle of the living room in her simple dwelling and ask her to try and reenact the last time she remembers using it before using my deductive powers of reasoning to place my hand down into the gap between the cushion and the armchair and retrieve it.

“Holmes, you astound me! How did you know it was there?”

“Elementary, my dear mother...”

“Do you think you might be able to find my missing bracelet...?”

Once again, the recreation of her recent movements will be talked through, only to discover that a heavy topcoat was required for her most recent visit to a house of worship, opium den, or gin palace, and there it will lie, twinkling upon the floor of the wardrobe, invisible to none but the most practiced (or younger) eye, and another miraculous restoration of lost property is achieved, and my reputation is maintained.

Sadly my powers failed me as I strolled along the local cycle trail one day about a year ago. A poster had been pinned up, asking if anyone had found a missing wedding ring, lost, it would appear, along that very track a few days earlier. I thought that this was probably a hopeless gesture at retrieving this valuable trinket, and I was in far too much of a hurry to engage in a probably futile search that day, but, with the gears of my mind grinding into action, I did wonder whether the unfortunate woman had been wearing gloves and whether, perhaps, the missing ring might indeed be found nestling inside the finger when she next put them on.

Of course, I shall never really know, but it is rather a cold day, so I may very well have to go hunting for this treasure later on, even if it is the very epitome of “long lost”, which means that I have the perfect excuse to try out my lovely new scarf...

“The game’s afoot!”