PERSPECTIVE UKNORTH
People and their profiles: dukes, archbishops, actors, writers, monks, oddbods, the garish, the gregarious - here they are in single file, chosen by chance, by inclination, or by necessity ... and all reflecting, one hopes, the essential, but indefinable, spark that makes one human being interesting to many. Geoffrey Mather
Spring
As frost and ice were clobbering half Britain, a fellow noted in a letters column that he had heard the first lawn mower. Whoever was driving it must be cuckoo. Before you know it, Easter will be upon us. Life is speeding up. Seems only minutes ago since I was surrounded by fireworks and singing Auld Lang‘s Eyne.
Ah well. Easter isn‘t bad.
"There’s a penny," my grandmother used to say, "for your new suit." Easter was always new suit time. Starched, cosseted, scrubbed and rigid, we were launched on the world, feeling the crispness of new pockets, the wordsof warning echoing in our ears: "Walk straight and don’t prick tar bubbles."
Your Sunday suit was Spring, like daffodils are Spring, and you wore it with pride and fear, usually attracting small missiles from others too cynical to appreciate your splendour.
The Sunday suit, let’s face it, is in decline, which is why two schoolboys in Doncaster once printed 2,000 leaflets urging men to wear suits when they went out on Sundays. It was part of their, "Keep Doncaster tidy" campaign.
I have suffered. Why shouldn’t they? One of my first wonders of apparel consisted of a white blouse and velvet trousers with pearl buttons. I dare you to stick your head out of the door with an outfit like that. I had to walk around the town hall in it holding the train of the cotton queen of the time. Storming the beaches at Dieppe was nothing to that, although I did not put it to the test.
Even above the singing, I could hear various friends saying, "Is that Jud?" (They always called me Jud.). "It IS Jud," they said in wonderment. "He’s in drag."
My relatives thought I was beautiful and my puce complexion gave my outfit a fitting glow. The following week, the Stanhillers, who had probably heard of the incident, descended on Oswaldtwistle with stone and stick and gave our whole neighbourhood a whacking, so that we had to go up to the big pond, which we called the delph, for a return match. We stoned them hard and they went off cursing. In retrospect, I think there was something of the neanderthal about us all.
I progressed from velvet to long trousers and a trilby and my voice broke. I was a base falsetto, a wow wherever I went, even a bigger wow, I imagine than an uncle of mine who, in his heyday, wore pin stripes, a hard hat and ate black puddings in the town centre. HIS father, for some reason, never wore socks.
The trilby was good in trams. If tired, you could rest the brim against the window and your head would bounce slowly hither and thither to the movement of the vehicle in a most soporific way. Apart from which, you could pretend you were George Raft.
The centre of town was the the focal point of everyone’s attention. On Sunday afternoons you walked along in pairs meeting the girls in pairs and everyone admired everyone else. The Italians still do it, but in their own country, of course.
A friend took a friend of his to the park for one of those paradings. They were bird-hunting, naturally, and my friend’s friend had never been able to capture a female, being attired in what he called worsted, but what everyone else called shoddy.
"These two," he would say pleadingly as females approached. "No," my friend would reply.
"Not these. We can do better."
Eventually the deprived one said, "These tarts, these tarts..." (even the respectable ones were known as tarts) and again, my friend said no. "That one smells," he said.
"I’ll have that that smells, Norman," said the poor soul, practically grovelling.
As life progresses, one discovers that to be immaculate is a working-class thing. This first burst upon my consciousness when I met my first real, live Lord. He was opening a fete and not only had the regulation leather patches covering everything wearable, but a huge slit in his raincoat. I considered slitting my own raincoat afterwards to give myself a bit of class, but never got up the courage. I had visions of my grandmother regretting all the Easter pennies.
This Lord did not look in the least out of place, I noted, whereas I, in my standard suit, white shirt and silver tie (the tie being an affectation of the time) attracted curious glances.
People have alarming shifts in their sartorial preferences. There was a period when, in London, you could say,
"Excuse me, miss" and find yourself pinned against a wall by a six-foot labourer with blonde hair down to his shoulders. I’m glad all that ended.
My lot tend to be conservative in such things at all times. There is no substitute for a suit in the proper order of things. Friend of mine went to a university ball in his best suit and they set fire to it from behind with a rolled up newspaper. Nasty business. Nor was that all. The students were dressed in sacking and they built a fire on the dance floor and sat round it like Indians.
"That’s my Savile-row suit," my friend was bleating as the flames took hold (he was a big wheel in the credit trading business). He was, meanwhile, beating away at the damaged cloth and hacking away at anyone’s shins who got in the way. He smouldered quite a bit before we were able to douse him properly and revive his spirits.
I expect he is like everybody else these days - dressed like trash.
People, if they wear suits at all, prefer OLD suits, and if anyone ever produced new old suits they might make a fortune.
So I’m with the lads from Doncaster. Here’s a penny for their fund. My grandmother was never stingy with her money and neither am I.
Daily Express column, 1970, with amendments
Geoffrey Mather © 2004
3 March, 2007