SUITS YOU

Well, I quite liked Friday’s cliffhanger, even if nobody else did. Of course it was never likely to be the sign-off that it might have resembled, not least because I would have been finishing all of our little communications which we transmit out into the big wide world on an odd number and you know that I would never allow THAT to happen…

Hmm… Referred to myself as “we” in that last paragraph. Delusions of grandeur…? A loss of the sense of self…? Or just trying to make these dark pages making their small stain upon the history of humanity look a little bit like a far more “professional” outfit…?

(Marketing is everything, you know, no matter how much of a despicable and dark art it might be… Like the worst kind of journalism, we tolerate it, but we don’t have to like it…)

Of course, it was always going to be a mistake to mention her loveliness, my beloved, in these pages, which is why I seldom do. After all, it would hardly be fair to write about someone who never reads these things and would be unlikely to speak in their own defence, and so I usually draw a veil over that aspect of my existence and instead draw you into my web of deception by telling you of the other things which occur - such as they are - and most of which are at least sort of true…

From a certain perspective at any rate…

Others whose lives touch upon mine, however tangentially, might disagree, but, if they do, well… Then they can write their own version of this nonsense from their point of view and I shall utterly reserve the right to disagree vehemently in the unlikely event that I should ever do anything significant enough to actually feature in their musings.

Anyway, I hope that you didn’t get the wrong impression about the beloved’s one word celebrity guest appearance in Friday’s outpouring from the dark byways of Lesser B.

Syntax and context are everything and she is, of course, the loveliest and most tolerant person on this planet. Well, she’d have to be to have put up with this old curmudgeon and his blunderbuss approach to tact and diplomacy for all of these years.

Anyway, with that preamble over with, here we still are, continuing with our conversation as if nothing had happened, however one-sided that conversation might actually be. I’m still tilling the barren soil in the hope of finding a lost hoard of roman silver in the thin and worn-out ground instead of the usual bits of old stone and the odd rotten potato which I fling out in your general direction in the hope that occasionally some of it might stick.

In a fairly short while, we are to attend another wedding. Now, despite all of the enjoyment many people get from such things, these are seldom my favourite occasions. That’s usually nothing to do with the people in question by the way, or even the event itself, it’s just down to me and my, well, not exactly “legendary” (I’m not that important…), but certainly familiar reaction to social occasions and the prospect of being in a room full of people I don’t know, all of whom might be in a “happy” mood…

In other words… A state of blind terror…

No I don’t know why it might be, but I blame the parents.

Mine, that is, not the ones involved in whichever wedding it might be.

Anyway, because this event is coming along fairly soon, I have to go out and buy myself a new suit. I still have some suits, some of which still actually fit me, but it is six years since I bought one to attend another wedding (in fact I liked it so much that bought two, one light and one dark…) so I guess that buying another one is rather overdue, even if the only opportunities I get to actually wear them are on the rare occasions that I can pluck up the courage to attend a wedding, the odd funeral, and when I go on holiday.

“A suit…? On holiday…? Are you mad?!!”

Well, it’s usually to make a determined effort to show that not all of the people getting off the plane arriving from a UK airport will be wearing baggy shorts and an unpleasant T-shirt.

We’re not all hooligans, you know…?

This time it has to be a three-piece suit that I get, because I need an excuse to use my bright shiny new pocket-watch which I was bought for my birthday this year which is a thing of rare beauty but it doesn’t go all that well with the usual slightly grungy look I cultivate for work these days.

Rather naturally I was planning on getting myself a nice little number in deepest darkest black (once the “twenty quid” option from the supermarket had been ruled out of the question anyway…), but that looks as if it might be flung off my options list as it has been deemed “too unforgiving” for someone of my age who is tending towards the portly…

“So” I asked, quite reasonably I thought “What other dark colours are there…?” (I’m with Henry Ford with this one) after all, despite me glancing lovingly across the room to where it hangs, my light linen suit was deemed too pale and inappropriate for the event and after that, only dark options were to going to be available for consideration.

Well there’s blue… (“I’ve already got a blue suit…”), grey (“It makes me look like a vicar…”), green (“Really…?”), brown (“Oh God, no…!”) and, er, that’s about it. I’ve already dismissed anything “shiny” or “pin striped” as looking a tiny bit sleazy, so the options are rapidly running out, it would appear…

“What about a really, really dark blue, a kind of midnight blue, only much darker…?” I suggest.

“You mean black, don’t you…?”

It might be a long day…