Suits You, Sir...

A very good day, from a Disappearing point of view.

Started with the bursting of a bubble though. Blood was a fairly chunky 5.7 this morning. So much for my run of low bloods. Humph.

However, that all changed at Culverhouse Cross. Culverhouse Cross is a place near Cardiff where there's a big Marks & Spencers store. We went there this morning because, when all is said and done, I needed a suit.

Now, two things are important here. Firstly...I hate wearing suits most of the time. I'm the kind of man who, to steal a well-worn description of British comedian Tony Hancock, "can make a suit crumple just by looking at it." A scruffbag, to use less poetic language. I take this as a kind of badge of honour, really - the ability to look like a scruffbag who's slept the night in a bramble hedge nad been pissed on by some indiscriminate local dogs and still do the job was at least half the appeal of becoming a journalist in the first place! So when I say "I needed a suit," I don't mean that I personally had a fundamental urge to go out this morning and buy a suit. I mean I have some meetings coming up in the next couple of weeks, for which it is apparently required that I wear a suit. I find this funny. These meetings include a couple of book launches at a well-known and popular maritime organisation, where I once turned up for - let's not forget - a book launch, dressed in civilian clothes, and caused dark mutterings to my boss. The next press invite I received from this particular well-known and popular maritime organisation stipulated a formal dress code!

Yep, I'm the one who ruined it for everyone, right here.

So, as I say, when I mention that "I needed a suit," what I actually mean is that "other, more tight-assed people need me to have a suit." That's point one.

Point two is this: I already have a suit.

A damned expensive suit, too - the last time I needed one was back in February, and I needed it in a hurry for...something or other. I honestly can't remember what now. Possibly it was to go and interview an MP about faith schools, on the day that a brand new pair of shoes disintegrated into tar-like mush under me with every step I took...Anyhow, the upshot is the last suit I bought was just before I started this experiment, and it's the subject of the experience that long-standing readers have heard me reference a few times now - when I had to go beyond the realms of my usual Big Fat Bastards store, because I'd gone off the top end of their rack. The suit is actually called "The Henry Tudor", which, given what else Henry VIII was famous for apart from divorcing wives with extreme prejudices, setting up a whacko church and burning all the monasteries (trust me, I'm a historian!), is not really conducive to a positive self-image.

The last time I put on the suit was just last week.
"Oh honey," said d, covering her mouth. "No...Just...worlds of no..."
She had a point. I looked like a kid playing dress up in his daddy's suit, if daddy was a professional masked wrestler going under the mysterious nom de guerre of "The Mysterious Masked Big Fat Bastard."

It looked more than a little silly. Now again, I think most suits, on a body like mine, look more than a little silly. So I guess you could say this looked more than more than a little silly. So - it's time to buy a new suit.

I approached the whole Marks & Spencers trip with some degree of skepticism, it has to be said. Three stone is three stone, but it seemed inconceivable that I could have gone from "off the far end of the Big Fat Bastard range" to "high street store" off-the-peg shopping. But I went, because...well, a) because I "needed" a suit, and b) because, as I may have mentioned, my wife and my mother together are something of a tsunami of personality, and It Was Easier.

I have of course at some point, on one of these trips, already picked up smaller trousers, so I figured we could cut to the chase, just get a jacket (at best) to match the smaller trousers, and be done with it. Getting a jacket, I thought, might be jussssst about conceivable. But there was no way I was gonna be able to get a shirt that did up at the neck.

I have a big neck. It's like all my chins conspire to get together in a big huddle at the base of my swallowing-tube and sit there, smirking at my efforts to find a collar that can go round them. I left off-the-peg shirts behind yeeeeeears ago. I mean, literally, about a decade ago.

Then we got there, and I saw The Suit.
Now, as I say, really, when I walked in, I had no intentions of getting A Suit. Maybe a jacket. But I still had the Big Fat Bastard shirt from the last suit, which happens, incidentally, to be purple (you can make me wear this shit, but nobody says it has to be tasteful!). The Suit was pin-stripe.

Now, on another little diversionary side-note, I've always hated pin-stripes. There's something about pin-stripes that smacks of inherited wealth and diminishing numbers of brain-cells, or braying city-boys and Ascot Yahoos who have absolutely no clue about the real world and its hardships, and I might be middle-class as all-get-out, but I'm Welsh goddammit, and no-one's gonna steal away my entitlement to think of myself as having come from a background of grinding grim coaldust poverty and grime.

But ohhhh The Suit...
The Suit called to me in all its stripey fabulousness. "C'mon..." it said. "Try me....you might like me if you get to know me."

I tried on the jacket, even while d was saying "You? In pin-stripes? Yeah, I don'thinkso honey-"
She stopped. She blinked. She grinned.
"Damn," she said. "Come back all I said...Suit looks goooood, baby..."
She was right. it did. The jacket looked all kindsa good, and, oddly enough, I looked better in a smaller version than actually could be said to fit me. Then there was the lining.

It was dark red.

Now, this is where things get really stupid, because I have a very weird reason for being attracted to red suit linings.
Many of you will have picked up on the fact that I'm a huge (in every way) Doctor Who fan. Now, back in the 70s, the Doctor's arch-enemy, The Master, had a neat line in flowing black cloaks with red lining, and when they brought the character back just a few years ago and brought him screamingly up to date, they put him in a simple black suit...but they made a particular point of having him show off its dark red lining...

The Master-Suit possessed me. I went to try it on, and it was beeeeautiful. The only thing is....it had red lining. A purple shirt, with that, is a little lurid even for me. Clearly what was needed here was a plain white shirt with a matching red tie.

Red tie - no problem.
White shirt...well they had plenty, but again, I've not been able to wear off-the-peg shirts for more than a decade. I could sense the Master-Suit disappearing from my life as quickly as it had arrived, its promise snatched away from me by the huge flab-folds of my bloody neck...
"Why not at least try one?" said d, and I, rather sulkily as the love of the Master-Suit was being cruelly ripped from me, stomped back off to the changing room and got the attendant to unpack it for me.
I took the white testament to disappointment into the cubicle, slung it over my shoulders, slid my arms through, did up a few of the buttons, putting off the moment of having to try the top button. Then I yanked.

Close! So damned close. It was a stubborn button, brand new and brash with its own immovability. I moved it, the Master-Suit egging me on.And, after about a minute and a half, the wretched little pale plastic thing slid through its hole and sat there, fuming.
"Fine!" it said. "If that's how you feel about it..."
It was done up.

IT WAS DONE UP!!!!

I blinked, looking at myself in the mirror. I was wearing off-the-peg. A whole thing, a whole suit, including the shirt, off the Marks and freakin' Spencers peg!!!

Fat Man Happy Dances ensued.

And the Master-Suit came home with me. I didn't, really, want to take it off.
Now, don't get me wrong - the trousers are still tight, and would be much happier if I lost some more weight. But that's the beauty of the Master-Suit. Looks good now, will look even better if I disappear a little more - this is a suit with a good chunk of Disappearing left in it.

We like that. We like that a lot.

Other grace-notes for the day - we went to see a family friend called Brenda. She may well have been high on some high-quality private-healthcare drugs, cos she was in surgery herself yesterday, but bless her, she wouldn't shut up about how "there's hardly anything left of you!". My hairdresser, again, raved about the amount of Disappearing I appear to have done. Even my globe-trotting journo pal Rebecca was kind enough to retort, when I mentioned my Buddha-like physique, "Ach, you're getting less bloody Buddah-like every time I see you!"

So, as I say, a good Disappearing day. Make me wear a suit will you, ya pompous buggers? Wait till you see the Disappearing Pin-Striped Bastard, I'll make you sorry you were even BORN!

Bwahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaa.....!!!!

(Ahem...just checked the label on the Master-Suit. Appears to have a disclaimer: Customers are advised that this suit comes with occasional homicidal tendencies and a desire to rule the entire universe. And on occasions, a silly evil laugh...)