YOUR Urban V is deeply embarrassed by the simple fact that he found
himself in one of his little South Side clubs with his trouser-flies
undone a little. Investigation proved that the trousering was by no
means what was required. Nobody bothers any more if one's willie is
jouking about one's trouser seam just as long as one is not smoking a --
crivvens -- cigarette. Raping half of Bosnia is as nothing to smoking a
Silk Cut, in The Herald building at least, that is. Doing in a B & H is
near to admitting one was first in the Latin prize before Eleonora
McGurk and being overly swanky. But trouser flies yet leave an
impression that, if open, the chap in trousers has not got it quite
right.
An intentional leavening in what we may call the lump, so to speak, is
not at all de rigueur, but my trouser fly, but the other day, was by no
means thought about. It was the simple result of a very old suit, past
its best, gone forever, and the last bastion of male ascendancy, to wit
a simple costume of jaiket and troosers, having given up the ghost.
For what has happened to myself is that the time has come to drop
myself into my tailors and replace the garb. It is all very well for the
editor of this blatt to swan about dressed like a leprosy victim from
Ben Hur: he has the Edinburgh patrician background which permits
slovenliness and more. If you had went to Edinburgh Academy, wearing a
clean shirt would have moved the chums to call one a spiv at the very
least.
Nouveau bourgeois such as myself are the great men for the bath every
morning and the boiled shirt, the shoes positively refulgent with Kiwi,
the crease in the strides enough to cut flowers, the boutonniere sliding
off the revers on the left-hand side. The silk kerchief flowered in the
breast pocket. The . . . in short the gentleman incarnate.
Imagine, thus, my disconcertment when I discovered that my suits did
not fit and in fact were no longer suiting. I was no longer, what d'ye
call it, soigne. Way down upon the soigne river in fact. For the truth
was that I was bursting out of my tailoring. I had put on the beef. Why
I seemed to be putting on so much beef that my trouser flies were
splitting themselves I do not know. Perhaps there was a specialised wee
part of the anatomy which was fattening itself . . . One muses on such a
development. But certainly something had to be done. Such as new
apparel.
Now as it happens I loathe shopping for clothes. For myself anyway. I
spent a merry few days shopping for girls' clothes before Yuletide. I
still remember the glorious episode when I did a splendid piece on
buying clothes for a lissome girl called Hilda (a blatt colleague of
mine and a distant relation at that), and dressed her up firstly as
Patty Duke, and later as Audrey Hepburn. Hilda reciprocated and had me
clad as a drunk Hitler Youth who had but recently emerged from a weekend
at Cap Ferrat with Beverley Nichols and Godfrey Winn. With an extra
weekend in Springburn chatting to Charlie Sim. I think you get the idea.
I enjoyed the gadding about girls' shops. For a start I couldn't
believe the sheer rudeness of lady shop assistants to lady customers.
The splendid asides. I was there, aside at that, in a large department
store when a stout female person was struggling into a size 18 evening
dress in a cubicle which might just have housed Bambi for heaven's sake
but not Dumbo's mum, which the lady resembled, and overheard one lady
assistant intimate to the other lady assistant that the lady in the
cubicle was clad in lingerie which had last seen the light of day in a
miner's cottage during the General Strike. ''Her knickers are stuck tae
hur erse, and hur gawn tae a Lord Provost's Ball.'' The other lady
assistant said the lady in the cubicle had feet on her like fork-lift
trucks. Then the first lady assistant said that the cubicle lady, as I
was beginning to think of her as a title really, would do for a sumo
wrestler with longer fingernails. By this time I was getting really
interested and I shudder to tell you what they said about the little
girl I had wandered into this emporium with in order to pay for the
dress she eventually didn't buy on the basis, I suspect, that it wasn't
expensive enough. Ach, I'll tell you. The two lady assistants told each
other that if the girl had any sense she'd go somewhere cheaper. ''I
suppose some old bugger is paying for it anyway,'' they said. Right.
But here was the Urban Voltaire in one of his little South Side clubs
with his trousers no longer displaying the sort of elan required.
Nothing for it but a trip to town. When I was but a lad I was wont to
wander round the emporia, looking for things unusual, erratic, garments
to upset the lieges. But now I exercise a conservatism only vouchsafed
to the middle-aged. I sloped into Ralphie Slater's.
''Ralph,'' I said, ''Four of the best; same as usual. Shirts too. You
know the ones I mean.'' Ralph issued the commands to the minions. Size
5[1/2] in shoes he remembered. I have even got as old as to let him
choose my ties. ''A couple of bright ones nobody would ever think of
wearing,'' I commanded. ''Except you,'' he said. ''We get them specially
in.'' Odd how one is more embarrassed by an open fly than one's cravat.
After all a necktie is big enough to notice, really, isn't it?
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