Stormy Weather

[Serial_Apologist]

Oh the fairer sex!!! A chap can't get away with anything!

The unfairer sex, more like!

Nah - most of my clothes date back to the 1980s and are getting either worn out or beyond stretchable to fit the ever more pear-shaped me. At least I can't yet admit to having reached the tweed jacket stage, quite..............

[Anna]

At least I can't yet admit to having reached the tweed jacket stage, quite..............

Oh, well I take it all back. I just assumed after this post:

I won't mention my purchases, but have to say, for gentlemen's clobber on offer at the moment, the range is pretty good - one can even get proper sports jackets in one retailer whose name one cannot mention for reasons of advertising - Harris Tweed included.

That you were lusting after some Harris Tweed!! To complement your absent minded professor look ..... Only joking <beats hasty retreat and closes internet browser>

[Serial_Apologist]

Oh, well I take it all back. I just assumed after this post:
That you were lusting after some Harris Tweed!! To complement your absent minded professor look ..... Only joking <beats hasty retreat and closes internet browser>

The professorial look is still minded, Anna.

[salymap]

Does anyone remember smittims? He said he liked tweed jackets and corduroy trousers and I thought him about sixty. It turned out he was years younger than that, so no disgrace S-A.

[Serial_Apologist]

Does anyone remember smittims? He said he liked tweed jackets and corduroy trousers and I thought him about sixty. It turned out he was years younger than that, so no disgrace S-A.

Young fogeydom came into fashion with Maggie Thatcher, saly. Look at the styles the no-longer-so-young-looking office whippersnapper with his boringly conventional short back and sides now has to wear - boring, dark grey suits (miles and miles of them in every department store), boring clompy black shoes, boring fat ties in lurid shiny colours, boring lurid stripey shirts that make one dizzy like staring down at the escalator looking at them. You really have to search for anything midway between stiff and formal and casual these daze, meaning horrible T shirts in sick-inducing colours with ridiculous irrelevant logos on, hoody tops and puffa jackets.

I watched a programme on cross-dressing a couple of years ago. Not that I was thinking of taking it up, you understand, but because, well, it takes all sorts, as they say. And, d'you know, I came away feeling quite enlightened. Many of these blokes like to get themselves up in women's clothes not because they're kinky but because they like the colour and stylistic variety on offer - I'm talking mainstream chain stores here - and deplore the re-masculinisation of the male look that seems to have returned with a vengeance with endgame turbo-capitalism. There's nothing more fascistic-looking in my book than the ubiquitous bloke in grey suite, black shirt and black tie, 1950s-type spectacles to remind you of your own dad, standing in the middle of a crowded pavement or nearly blocking a shop entrance, barking at someone on the other end of a mobile phone. At least you can get an I Love Peckham T shirt at the market there for just a few quid. I nearly bought a T shirt in Camden Lock before it burned down with the words "I am a lesbian" on the front, just to show 'em.

Yeah! I feel like Arthur Smith the way I'm writing this. In fact, I rather admire fellow sarf Londoner Arthur Smith.

[Nick Armstrong]

High-base thunderstorms developing over the Home Counties as I write - totally unforecast by the guys with all the technology!

Did you see this S_A? The guys with all the technology actually overruled the technology... and had to grovel http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/t...e-weekend.html

[Anna]

Did you see this S_A? The guys with all the technology actually overruled the technology... and had to grovel http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/t...e-weekend.html

Perhaps they should have nipped outside and consulted the seaweed hanging at the back door of the BBC? (Did anyone else, as children, bring some home because you were told it always forecast rain? In fact in became a magnet for flies and began to smell really horrid and mother would get rid of it whilst you were at school but you always brought back more after a trip to the seaside) A farming friend has told me we are to get the tail-end of a hurricane, any truth in this?

As to S_A’s post about mens fashions. I agree, the uniform they seem obliged to wear – dark suits, black shoes, the only individuality left in their choice of tie is extremely boring. Women have so much choice; skirt, dress, trousers; brogues, Mary Janes or killer heels. Is that why men in kilts are so impossible attractive?

[vinteuil]

As to S_A’s post about mens fashions. I agree, the uniform they seem obliged to wear – dark suits, black shoes, the only individuality left in their choice of tie is extremely boring. :

... when I was employed and 'had' to wear suits etc - I quite liked the fact that no thought was involved - you just got up, but on white shirt, dark suit, sober tie, black shoes - and off you went. I' m glad they didn't have the aberration of 'dress down Fridays' in them days...

.... now that I'm a gennelman of leisure, I'm still happy to have a sort of uniform that doesn't require too much thought - coloured shirt, chinos, hacking jacket, suede shoes...

[Anna]

... when I was employed and 'had' to wear suits etc - I quite liked the fact that no thought was involved - you just got up, but on white shirt, dark suit, sober tie, black shoes - and off you went. I' m glad they didn't have the aberration of 'dress down Fridays' in them days...

So exactly the same as Matron laying out your school uniform at Prep School?

.... now that I'm a gennelman of leisure, I'm still happy to have a sort of uniform that doesn't require too much thought - coloured shirt, chinos, hacking jacket, suede shoes...

Umm, nice, hacking jackets are so cool ....... in tweed I presume rather than an Alexander McQueen? It'll last you a lifetime!! Love suede shoes, thinking of getting a pair of retro desert boots myself ....

[vinteuil]

So exactly the same as Matron laying out your school uniform at Prep School?
....

.... very happy to say no boarding school for me!

My Pa had been so miserable at his public school that he rejected the idea of any of his sons having to undergo the same wretchedness...

[Serial_Apologist]

Is that why men in kilts are so impossible attractive?

Hmmm - I must look up kilts sometime, then!

Coincidentally, I noticed, this issue of the homo(sic)genous look came up tangentially in one of the messages on the Assange thread, with regard to ther relative sexualisation of the two, er, main genders...

[Serial_Apologist]

.... very happy to say no boarding school for me!

My Pa had been so miserable at his public school that he rejected the idea of any of his sons having to undergo the same wretchedness...

How I wish my father had had the same view. As with so many other things he was in perpetual denial: never was there anything like the horros alongside the conpulsory religion I threw at him in an overheated argument one day, such as effectively paedophilia by older boys and some masters against the younger, prepubescent ones, bullying, corporal punishment at the slightest transgressions with no right of appeal or complaint. On the contrary, the experience had "toughened him up", made him - and me - into "a man", taught us independence (huh!) and self-reliance (); yet everybody knows from the writings of the 1930s that these were as rife in the public schools of the 1930s as of the '50s and '60s. If only it hadn't bludgeoned me into supination, I'd have burned the bloody place down.

[eighthobstruction]

SA....what sort of winter will we get if the Jet Stream does not go north....

>>> I'd have burned the bloody place down.<<<....You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off....

[amateur51]

... when I was employed and 'had' to wear suits etc - I quite liked the fact that no thought was involved - you just got up, but on white shirt, dark suit, sober tie, black shoes - and off you went. I' m glad they didn't have the aberration of 'dress down Fridays' in them days...

.... now that I'm a gennelman of leisure, I'm still happy to have a sort of uniform that doesn't require too much thought - coloured shirt, chinos, hacking jacket, suede shoes...

You know what King George V used to say to men he spotted wearing suede shoes at Sandringham?

"Goin' rattin'?"

[Serial_Apologist]

SA....what sort of winter will we get if the Jet Stream does not go north....

>>> I'd have burned the bloody place down.<<<....You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off....

Another cold winter like last, eighth, but I won't be buring this place down to keep myself warm, or even, (or especially), blowing the doors off!