New shirts


Every few years, I realise that the clothes I’ve been wearing for work are wearing out, and I need new ones. In Hong Kong this was quite easy, as I had a good tailor who would produce shirts for me fast and to order. In Singapore, I’ve found it a bit harder. Partly because it’s so hot and humid all the time, the long sleeved shirts that were somehow acceptable in Hong Kong are too hot for here. And partly because when I did have a tailor in Chinatown run me up a batch of ten short sleeved shirts, for some unfathomable reason he constructed them out of the itchiest, least breatheable cotton on the planet, and also made them all slightly too small across the shoulders, so wearing them is a continuous exercise in discomfort.

Mistrustful of going the handmade route again, and having not bought any shirts in at least two, possibly three years, today we all trooped down to a branch of Uniqlo, the Japanese cheap clothes chain, and I bought six different polo shirts in a variety of colours and patterns, and a fancy-looking shirt with a pattern designed by Liberty of London. Although I work in a technology company and I’ve always worked in technology companies, and they’re not known for being particularly buttoned-down when it comes to dress codes, I do like to have a collar on when I go to work. I don’t wear shirts with collars very often at the weekend, and I like to have the physical signifier that now I’ve dressed up a bit, and I’m off to do some work. (And conversely, that when I come home and take off my collared shirt, I’m not working any more and I can relax and concentrate on the rest of my life.) I take this as a lesson my father taught me early on: you should change out of your school uniform, or your work clothes, when you get home, because otherwise it’s much harder to draw a firm line between those different worlds.

(Then again, as a hardworking accountant he was often in the office at weekends, so it’s not clear that just taking your shirt off stops this contamination between the spheres. Although I suppose if he’d gone to the office half naked, maybe he wouldn’t have been able to work very many weekends. This is the sort of thing I’d really like to run an A-B test on, and also something that I doubt I’ll ever be able to.)

So anyway, I now have six new polo shirts – four blue, one charcoal grey and one in maroon that my wife bullied me into buying. I have bad memories of maroon (it was the colour of the blazers we had to wear at secondary school for four years) but infuriatingly, having put it on it seems to suit me really well, demonstrating that my wife knows far better than I do how to make me look good. (Unless she’s got a set of clippers in her hand.)

La Serpiente was very excited to be in a clothes shop, because there were lots of mirrors that she could shout at while dancing a jig. I wonder if she’s actually an alien, doing these things to summon her brethren to visit us in a flying saucer. Of if she’s just a wind-up merchant (like the point later in the afternoon when she grabbed a floor standing mirror and tried to pull it over onto her head). Today she’s been … difficult. She screamed her head off last night until her sister woke up, and then got up early today and chased us out of our beds. All day she’s had little acts of misbehaviour, which are quite charming in isolation but if you’ve had 24 hours of her jumping around, shouting and pushing things then your nerves get a little frayed. Poor thing also has a cough at the moment, which may be making her struggle as well. It helped me – dosed up on medication this evening, she fell asleep in less than 15 minutes (against the usual hour plus that it takes). So there’s an ill-wind that blows no good.

We also went to the library today. We acquired some children’s books that I don’t think are necessarily all suitable for children, but I’ll try to write something up on that tomorrow.

Oh, and I went for a short run, and my toe didn’t hurt at all, which makes me think I may be able to return to full exercise earlier than hoped. So the weekend is on an upward trajectory.


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