Over the weekend an acquaintance randomly enquired if I wanted to purchase some ‘seconds’ boxer shorts at £1 a pair. The source of these much unsought after under garments being a local factory where his mother worked. I wasn’t inquisitive enough to ask the guy, however I’m assuming she’s moved jobs as last I heard she worked for a milk distribution company….. Unless, of course, Arla Foods have diversified.
Foolishly, I questioned what were the production flaws within the products that rendered them as ‘seconds’. Sheepishly, he confided that they’d been inadvertently manufactured with two flies (one front, one back) and a collar.
Sounding to me like ‘Y Did You Bother’ fronts rather than ‘Y’ fronts, his initial sales technique lacked the influencing skills required to ignite my interest in purchasing the sub-standard products.
As did his further pitch, pointing out possessing two flies meant you could turn the under garments around to “Get an extra days wear out of them’. A fact, he advocated, giving them a significant ecological advantage over conventional one fly undies. Boasting enthusiastically, “You save on both washing powder and water!”
“Not only that”, his sales spiel continued, “You’d be one of a select few in the world that possessed boxer shorts adorning a collar.”
As much as I admired my acquaintances tenacity at trying to shift these runts in the clothing litter, I felt moved to clarify that owning underwear with a collar was conspicuously absent from my bucket list.
I’ve many unachieved aspirations in life, However, as appealing as it sounds to own shreddies I can adorn for an extra day, the option to wear a partly concealed tie around my boxer shorts waistline isn’t, and will never be, one of them. Consequently, my muckers attempt to convert me to a brave new world of idiosyncratic undies fell on deaf ears.
The prose above was written in my local McDonalds restaurant over coffee. I’d originally intended to pen the whole blog as guest of Ronald – Literary banter amongst the Big Macs; creative quilling betwixt the quarter pounders.
Sadly, though, due to the distraction of a cleaner’s singing and a very loud conversation on an adjacent table by two guys in the fabrication trade, it was a plan I’d course to revise.
When I say the two guys were in the fabrication industry I’m referring to the fact their trade involved structural steel construction, not that they made a living from creating untruths……. That being said, the latter sounds a significantly more fun option than the former.
Don’t get me wrong, the work these guys undertake is an essential role that contributes towards the underpinning of the UK economy. I opine, though, that akin to smokers in restaurants, people who wish to talk about structural steel techniques should be made to do so in ‘fabrication shelters’ outside…… Or, at the very least, made to whisper their verbal interactions, not delivered in voices of megaphone noise levels.
Despite telling me he’d endeavour not to disturb me, on witnessing me tapping away on the laptop, the affable cleaner did distract me with his occasional outbursts of song. Refrains delivered in a style that I’d heartily wager wouldn’t coax Will.i.am and fellow ‘The Voice’ judges to turn their chairs.
His version of ‘Hi Ho. It’s off to work we go’ from Disney’s Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs was so bad I nearly went in search of the wicked stepmother’s poisoned apple…… If he wouldn’t have eaten it, I flaming would have!
Anyhow, as a consequence of these distractions, I took a decision to complete the second part of my narrative in the peace and quiet of chez Strachan.
I wanted to close by informing you that this week I’m looking after a neighbour’s two cats. One of whom has the habit of using my front garden as his toilet…… The irony of me feeding the moggy, only for it to later that day pass the waste into my garden border hasn’t been lost on me.
