the horrors of polyester

I may have studied fashion promotion, but the meaning of what this actually is completely escapes my family. However, they do seem to grasp the ‘fashion’ element. My grand father in particular seems to have caught on and is even evaluating what his trousers say about him. I would like to think my efforts at explaining lifestyle branding have rubbed off, but after the following episode I can see my attempts are futile.

Now let me paint you a picture. This isn’t an old man with a stick, swimming relentlessly around memories of the war. This is Grandad who is probably fitter and healthier than me, and you for that matter. He cycles sixty miles sometimes three days a week, plays tennis, grows numerous vegetables and ferries the entire family back and forth between various appointments on demand. His only request being that he is allowed a nap after lunch.

Usually we enter in to pointless rounds of stubborn debates over the definition of shepherds pie or the possibility that the meaning of the earth and everything in it is 22, and I am given no slack in consideration of my youth, (he is pretty big on anti-agism too). Yet he will sheepishly enter the dining room, modelling an impulse pair of what he says are ‘practical, I’ve jut got off my boat and going for a glass of port’ trousers . A way of speaking I am sure he as adopted from me, in which an entire garment will summarise your every dream and whim. “Well?” he asks.

I look. He is modelling, what look suspiciously like an unruly spewing of polyester trousers, in a muted duck egg blue that do no favour for his lean frame, and are not only ugly trousers but are the sort of item that would provoke hours of rebuke on the terrors of polyester from my friends and I. There are many, believe me; the static, the noise, the undeniable man made sheen and unsightly way the fabric falls, in that it doesn't fall but merely hangs in a desperate manner.

I am sure, after reading this, he will storm in dramatically demanding I take back this clear line of unprovoked abuse at his beautiful new trousers. I could almost buy in to his daydream of yachts and expensive liquor, if the polyester were cotton or linen and the colour was crisp white, but dirty blue polyester trousers Grandad say only one thing - OLD! And that is one thing your trousers should never say about you.