Dress code

In my last, I claimed that my long-standing writer’s block was over, and promised to continue my memoirs from where they left off last February at the age of fourteen. There has been plenty of scribbling since then but nothing fit to print. I wanted by some means to indicate “the story so far” so as to fulfil the aim that each post on this blog be self-sufficient and meaningful to the reader who stumbles on it for the first time. But the tone was invariably wrong, and the writing just wouldn’t go where I wanted it to. In the end, I grasped that an inner voice wanted to be heard, even though it wasn’t saying what I wanted to hear. It kept on going on about clothes. Around fourteen or fifteen I started to care how I looked. So here are some extracts retrieved from recent drafts otherwise consigned to oblivion. The year is 1956/7.

The bitterest row was over my greatcoat. Every Thursday, we had a cadet parade at school in the afternoon, with periods of instruction in the military arts. Instead of school uniform, cadets would spend the whole day in “battledress”. The night before, boots had to be spit-and-polished. If you had new boots, the bumps on the toecaps had to be burned flat with a hot spoon. The gaiters and belts had to be Blanco’d, brass buckles had to be Brasso’d. Trousers and tunic had to be ironed to produce razor-sharp creases in exactly the right places, using special methods such as shaving the serge threadbare on the inside and rubbing it with dry soap. To get the trousers to hang neatly over the gaiters, weights were used, for example lumps of lead on a circle of string. Many of these operations were officially forbidden, but this didn’t stop me and other obsessives from spending hours on them every Wednesday evening. We wanted to achieve a certain look, as in the photo alongside, which is not of me, but a cadet sergeant who actually did go on to a distinguished career in the real Army. My mother remarked upon an odd contrast. I worshipped my army uniform with unseemly idolatry, whilst leaving my ordinary school uniform crumpled each night on the bedroom floor. I treated her observation with the complacency of one who knows better than his elders how things should be arranged.

What I did mind, and what caused shouting and even tears, was my mother ordering me to wear my greatcoat to school, on days when no other boy turned up in this heavy garment. I explained that she was not my superior officer, merely my mother. I was prepared to come to school looking like a Cossack in a Russian winter only when there was thick snow on the ground. Any other weather condition, including frost, rain, hail or high wind, did not justify the greatcoat. Confronted with this dilemma, a less principled and more diplomatic boy would have donned the disputed garment as he walked out the door, bidding his mother an affectionate farewell and offering his cheek for a light kiss. Then he would have stuffed it in a hedge round the next corner. And if it were to have disappeared when he returned to collect it in the evening? He wouldn’t mind: he’d have helped keep some tramp warm.

In addition to being (unwisely) trusted to study unsupervised during many slots within the week’s timetable, a Sixth-Former was awarded the privileges, responsibilities and accoutrements of being a Prefect. We wore white shirts like adults, instead of grey. Our blazers were edged with a slightly more colourful piping instead of the usual black and white. Our caps had a tassel which swung uncontrollably into our eyes but conveyed great authority. I remember buying a couple of white shirts at Whitcher’s, the school outfitters in town. I put one on straight away and as I walked out of the shop, I felt an altogether new status, which I was sure would be apparent to every passer-by. “This is no boy, but a young gentleman!” they would be saying. I was fifteen.

My preoccupation with clothes must have sprung from an awareness of our relative poverty. My pockets always seemed to have holes in them, through which pencils and coins frequently fell. At some point in the late fifties, drainpipe trousers became the fashion. I had no problem with the coarse grey flannel of our school uniform, and if it looked like prison garb so much the better, to emphasize the lack of choice; but I desperately wanted something more stylish for leisurewear. No funds were available but my stepfather offered me his demob suit. This was issued to ex-servicemen on their demobilisation to “civvy street”. It was thick brown worsted with chalk stripe, made to last a lifetime or beyond. I got my mother to sew up the legs to achieve the drainpipe appearance. Unfortunately her skills were insufficient to reduce the size above the crotch; so that the seat, fly and waistband remained a few sizes too big, giving a somewhat ludicrous appearance. I wore them anyway. It was the lesser of two evils.

I publish the above extracts with some embarrassment, but the addiction to writing gets the better of me. I prefer it when I can be the mouthpiece of some edifying spiritual discourse, but that doesn’t happen too often. I need to write something, and, because I like to view sentences and paragraphs as pieces of precision engineering, I’d happily work as someone’s hired editor, or even in volunteer mode if it were a good cause. What would be a good cause? Anything that felt like one.