Tudor Pants and Strangers On A Train

Blood was 5.5 this morning.

This has been a weird week all round. Feels like I’ve been too busy to breathe, but if you were to nod sympathetically and ask me what I’ve achieved with all that busyness, I’m not sure I could really tell you.

Today, I’m on a most peculiar mission to return some Tudor pants.

Pants, I should say, in the American sense. Some of you will remember the saga of the Master suit, and why it was necessary – the previous suit I owned, I bought before starting this Disappearing lark. Took most of it to Wales with us before setting out for Amroth, but the ‘Henry Tudor’ pants – named for their size, rather than their age - were stuck somewhere in the darker recesses of our wardrobe, and we couldn’t have carried them if we’d wanted to.

So I got into them this morning. That was weird. d rummaged in the cupboard – she’s a good rummager is my wife – and then pulled this enormous swathe of material out in one hand.

I blinked, opened my mouth.

I shut it again. Then I blew out some air.

“Blimey,” I said.

“Yeah,” she agreed. She held the pants out to their full width.

“Christ alive,” I murmured.

“Yyyyyeah,” she said.

They were wider than our doorframe.

“Did I…erm…?”

“Fill ’em dear? Yyyeah, kinda.”

I blew out some more air.

“That explains a lot,” I acknowledged.

“Yyyeah,” she said. I looked at her skewiff. Considering it was just one word, she was getting a whole world of meaning and definition into her “Yyyeah”s.

“You never said anything,” I said.
“What was to say?” she asked, not unfairly. “Hey, lardass, you’re lookin’ like a blimp and you’re gonna die?”

I nodded.

“Could’ve said something,” I said. I took the pants from her, pulled them up. They fell down. I pulled them up again. They fell down. I mean, no sidling, sliding down, nono, this was just gravity, doing its immediate, ‘ya cannae change the laws of physics’ thing.

d pulled a belt from…somewhere. It’s another of her skills. She threaded it round me, and I did it up.

They fell down.

I muttered a couple of dark words against the memory of Henry Tudor, just because I could – it wasn’t like he was gonna talk back to me. I’m not entirely sure what d did next. Something altogether complicated involving threading the belt through the hooky-bits. Essentially, she was knotting the trousers and the belt into one complicated arrangement, like a tramp with a rope-belt.

I’m now on a train heading back to Merthyr, to deliver the Tudor pants to my mother. She took up Ebaying when we were home last, and I have a nasty suspicion she’s going to get Rather Good At It.

“Oh, bring the trousers home,” she said, “I’ll put the whole suit on Ebay…”

Can’t wait to see that advert.

Suit for sale. Would suit medieval monarch, or chronically out-of-control fat fuck. Cheap at the price. So if you’re almost comically huge and in need of a sharp outfit, buy it now!

Meanwhile, this has been the most entertaining train ride I’ve had in a while. I swear sometimes, the best British playwrights – and, if they’ve got any sense, the best British soapwrights too – are buggering about riding up and down the country on trains and buses with their lugholes open. I’m travelling without d (seemed a bit much to ask her to take a day’s leave just to deliver some pants), but am on a table with three fantastically entertaining ladies, who, if I’m honest, I’ll be sorry to leave at Cardiff. I’d tell you some of the things they’ve said, but they’ve told me not to, and I’m trying to pull off the ‘gentleman’ schtick. If I say this is pure Alan Bennett though, at least some of you will understand what I mean, and the rest can Google it or Youtube it.

Got delayed for fifty minutes before we hit Reading, but in all honesty, it’s all in how you look at it. Most people see a fifty-minute delay. I’m thinking of it as “My First Play.”

Oh go on then, one tiny example:

“I think I’m gonna brave it and go for a drink…I think you’ll have to come with me, in case I get hijacked.”

A beat.

“They’d have to be brave to hijack you. (sniff). They’d want their money back!”

I mentioned that that was gonna have to go in.

“What the Hell are you writing, mate?”

“He’s writing about us!”

“He’d better not, I’ll sue ’im, and I’ve got a really good lawyer.”

See the risks I take for you lot?

Oh and I know what you’re thinking by the way – going all this way, just to deliver a pair of pants? In case you’re wondering, yes, I have heard of the Post Office. Longer-term readers will know though that the Post Office is where Bad Things happen to me. I lost one stone and went to the Post Office and a 45-year-old male Trekkie with a uniform fetish tried to pick me up. I can’t, and don’t want to, imagine what might happen if I try my luck at the Post Office after three stone! I’ll brave the wrath of three fantastic ladies for ya, but thus far and no further…