Courtesy of a family friend’s gift, my wife Karen, my parents and I enjoyed Afternoon Tea at a local café on Tuesday. After a challenging few months for the family, it was pleasant distraction which we all thoroughly appreciated.
After what seems like months of wearing scruffs and recently neglected grooming, I made a big effort to look smarter than of late for our sojourn to the café on the outskirts of Wakefield.
Not only had I trimmed and conditioned my beard, but I’d platted my nasal hair, removed enough ear wax to create a church candle and undertook my time consuming ritual of baldness damage limitation. The latter a onerous task requiring hair manoeuvring of forensic precision to hide my ever receding pate.
With all the time spent grooming and clad in smart/casual clothing, I felt dapper as I headed towards my reserved café seat. Donning my best cable knit jumper, lucky denim jeans and tanned leather shoes, I felt I cut quite a figure while vain gloriously wandering to my seat.
I call them my lucky jeans as I haven’t been run down by a bus while wearing them……. Although, to be honest, I’ve not been knocked over by a bus in any of my other pairs of jeans. However, there was never any real logic to my clothing nicknames, as my sock Andy would verify.
Elderly ladies openly cooed as I aloofly strutted past them like Lord Avashight. Their gawping accompanied by comments of admiration like “I don’t like swearing, but where the f*** did he get that jumper from?…. It’s bloody awful!”
Her friend added “Never mind his sweater!…. What about those jeans?…. They must be his lucky jeans!…. There can’t be any other reason for wearing trousers as ugly as that!”
After winking at the elderly ladies, I sat down with the deluded self satisfaction resultant from my new role as ‘Grandmas Choice’.
Once sat down, a third elderly woman was heard to utter that my clothing made me “look like a dog’s dinner!”. I felt this was an uncalled for barbed comment from my mum, so told her to “Bollocks!”…… That being said, as an alsation earlier licked its lips as I passed, there may have been something in her putdown.
Shortly after being seated, our sandwiches, scones, cakes and hot beverages were delivered to the Strachan table.
It was heartening to see my dad troughing heartily on the feast in front of him. He hasn’t been well recently, resulting in his appetite diminishing. However, on that sunny West Yorkshire afternoon, he was the only one of our quartet to consume their full quota of fodder.
Well done Mally!….. As you always say “A feast is as good as a rest!”
After multiple tea top ups and the old ladies asking if I wanted a better jumper knitting, we left a tip for the attentive and friendly café staff, before heading for the door……. In fact they were so friendly they gave me a tip. It was “Let that old lady knit you better jumper!”
Once at home, I went upstairs to dress into my scruffs, binning my lucky jeans on my return down the steps.
To clarify, the discarding of denim wasn’t the result of offence at a geriatric putdown. It followed doubts about the clothings powers of good fortune after the bloody Wrenthorpe bus ran over my foot when we left the café!
