Dress Code

Aug 5, 2020

I recently took delivery of my new Muji joggers. It’s rare that I buy new clothing (no surprise to anyone who has seen me) and so it was the cause of much celebration in our house, and gentle ribbing from Phil, when I showed off my new leg wear. They are navy blue, clean and not baggy at the knee. These are the impossibly high standards I demand of my trousers.

I can wear them inside and outdoors. Suitable to be worn in company, if I ever had company, as well as slobbing on the sofa, my default mode. This is new and liberating. I normally maintain a strict indoor/outdoor division in my dress code. It’s important to uphold standards when you work from home. No PJs on the school run. That requires trousers. Jeans, actually. I don’t own trousers. If years of wearing a school uniform is supposed to prepare you for the professional workplace it certainly set me on my future path.

The joggers will join the grey linen leisure trousers I often wear. I just invented that particular clothing niche. I don’t know if they are indoor or outdoor wear, which causes me some unease. They look like something a NYC architect would wear while raking the gravel of their rooftop zen garden. They look a smidgeon less stylish on me when I nip out to put a split bag of garbage in the bin.

Then there’s my arctic camo pyjama pants.

Bought by my parents as a presumably last-minute Christmas present many years ago. I suspect they came from Primark, the UK’s top retailer of high end couture. My parents are nothing if not thrifty. This attire has the advantage of being light, comfortable and perfectly suited to a short notice call up from Norwegian special forces.

Whenever I open the door to a parcel delivery person at 2:45 pm on any given weekday they will do a double take at my bold fashion statement. Or they pitying think, poor man, he’s one of those long-term unemployed who has given up all hope of a return to meaningful employment. They are not far wrong.

In the era of fast fashion this garment was not made to last. I suspect I have worn out at least eight of its nine lives and washed countless polluting micro plastics into the world’s oceans. Sorry, plankton.

Some day soon the arctic camo PJ bottoms will have to be retired. It will be the end of a mini ice age. I will build them a funeral pyre (I suspect they are highly flammable) and give them a heroes farewell as they ascend on the backs of Valkyries to Valhalla. Come Ragnorok, when the world tree Yggdrasil shakes and the three roosters crow, I will wear them again as we (me, Odin and Thor in that order) charge into battle and meet our doom in the jaws of the wolf Fenrir.

For now though, they have work to do. They may be threadbare in the seat and holey at the ankle but we’re a team, dammit. Keeping my legs reasonably warm and relatively comfortable while we hammer out timeless prose such as this.

Thank you, artic camo pyjama pants. I couldn’t do it without you.

Speaking of dress code, I’m donning my beret and getting into the Giclée business with an art print of The Book Tour. Mailed worldwide from my store.