Am I a Fashion Agnostic

“Dad, your shorts are so old fashioned. Why don’t you get some new ones, a bit more in fashion?”

I look at my shorts, I see nothing wrong, they are clean, they fit me, they are not worn out and I happen to like them. I look at what others are wearing, are they shorts? Long shorts or are they trousers that are a bit short. They have all these redundant pockets hanging off them, if I were to utilise all those pockets surely I would not be able to keep them up. I don’t like how they look. “But that is the fashion Dad!”

Am I a fashion agnostic? What purpose does wearing clothes that are “in fashion” serve? From my point of view fashion serves no purpose!

Have I always been this way? Was there a time when fashion was important to me? I search through the annals of my mind.

Ah ha! When I was fourteen years of age I remember having bottle green trousers and pink iridescent or luminous socks. Fashion must have been important to me. Why do I remember this?

…it was around midday on Saturday and my mother was preparing lunch, I was in my usual place on a Saturday morning, at my best mate’s place. “Allan, go and tell Lindsay to come home for lunch, and don’t be long.” This was a good opportunity for Allan as he did not yet have a bike of his own, this instruction meant that he could ride Dad’s bike which was normally reserved for Dad to ride to work.

We lived in Aberdare, it had long straight streets and ours had just been sealed for the first time. My best mate, Richard, lived in the same street almost three blocks away, about 800 yards. On the way home the opportunity for a bike race just could not be resisted. My bike was a bit of a made up thing of various salvaged parts and Dad’s was in pretty good condition having been bought new only a few years earlier when we shifted to town.

The freshly sealed roadway made for a good ride, much better than the corrugated gravel of a few weeks earlier. I was well in the lead halfway home, standing up on the pedals and pushing hard, little brother would not catch me! Next thing my world was upside down and I was on the sharp blue metal road surface clutching my torn knee. A worn chain on a sprocket that was not true had brought me undone.

My brother passed me as I fell, stopped and came back only to jump on the bike and head home. Still clutching my knee, Dad arrived in our 1936 Dodge sedan, my brother must have told a grim story for Dad to arrive in the car, he bundled me and the bike in. Mum was waiting out front when we arrived and I was not allowed out of the car.

What has all this got to do with fashion you might ask. Bottle green trousers and pink luminous socks. I am coming to it.

The outcome of this race home was that I spent two weeks in hospital following the emergency surgery on my knee and endured a slow recovery with a knee that did not want to bend.

I was back in school now, a French lesson in the new extensions to our high school. I was seated in my usual place in the front row. I had definite instructions that I should sit in the front row due to my attentiveness to French lessons. Mr Penny had made that quite clear early in the year.

We had new style student desks with separate chairs, even so, as I was quite a tall boy and the desk was right up against the teacher’s podium, with my stiff knee, I had to rest my foot on the podium so as to stop my knee from aching.

Have I mentioned bottle green trousers and luminous pink socks. Not exactly the school uniform, well the trousers had been bought at the start of winter and it was now spring and the trousers being a little short, the socks were well in Mr Penny’s view on the edge of the podium. The French lesson went on “quelle heure est-il?” “il est neuf heures et demie” “comment êtse-vous bon ami?”, and so on.

THREADGATE, GET UP THE BACK, I CANNOT STAND IT ANY LONGER! roared Mr Penny. To my shocked look he added “must you wear those socks.” That was “Bull” Penny always roaring at someone.

When I find such a memory it is like rummaging through a box of old things that have been put away and not opened for year. I can’t stop looking at each piece that I find. Did I find “Bull” Penny tucked away in those annals.

I have said I lived at Aberdare, it was a good place to grow up. One such good feature was Aberdare Park, it was on Aberdare Road next to the Aberdare Pub. It was a good park with playground equipment and two rotundas and plenty of room to play cricket on a Saturday afternoon.

One such Saturday afternoon, several of us were enjoying such a game of cricket. There was Peter O’Neill he was quite a respectable fast bowler, Grahame Brown, the son of one Mr H Brown a teacher at our High School, John Roberts an all round sportsman, in fact about half the senior cricket team was there. We even had a genuine six stitcher cricket ball rather than the usual worn out tennis ball.

The match was well underway when into the park from the corner gate next to the pub swaggered Mr Penny. “Ha boys practicing cricket chanted” an unusually happy Mr Penny “Good on you. Here let me have a bat” he said taking the bat from Grahame Brown. Well Peter O’Neill was bowling and he sent down a couple of moderate balls which Mr Penny showed no sign of laying bat on.

“Come on Peter, give me something I can hit”, Peter took a few steps back and bowled his best Yorker, right on leg stump. It hit Mr Penny right on the foot on the full, I said it was a Yorker. Well “Bull” Penny jumped up and down, threw the bat on the ground and roared “yer broke me toe, yer broke me bloody toe.” He hobbled and swaggered across the park on his way home.

The cricket match was paused as the boys contemplated next week’s French lessons and “Bull” Penny roaring just a little louder at them. I was however quite relaxed as I no longer participated in French lessons having learned French so well in my junior years that I was no longer required to study French.

What has all this got to do with fashion? Nothing! I told you that I am a fashion agnostic and my attention to that subject is about as good as was my attention to my high school French lessons.

Lindsay Threadgate

December 2012