Snow Balls

If you're anything like me, which you're not, unless you're a forty-five-year-old Anglo-Armenian conductor/writer and father-of-one whose current extreme sleep deprivation owes much to the Australians' stubborn insistence that The Ashes be played once every four years in the antipodal hemisphere instead of, as any civilised person knows, its proper home, by which I mean the green and pleasant land that I call the nation of my birth and that you probably call England, although of course you all know that I just put that bit in to annoy Australians, of whom I am actually very fond, especially those of them to whom I am related, which is something I don't admit to very often, but there you go, there's no accounting for the things that come out at times like this, then you probably don't shop for clothes much.

That sentence does make sense, but it got a bit rambly in the middle. Rambly to the tune of an extended nested construction of 134 words, which, unless you are James Joyce, which you aren’t, is probably a bit... I'll start again.

I don't shop for clothes much.

I did yesterday though. I found myself, through a complicated concatenation of circumstances, at Clapham Junction early in the morning, trying to find my way home, having spent the night before at the bedside of my ailing mother (she's fine, thanks. I merely put that bit in to garner the sympathy of the reader).

There’s been a curious dual climate thing going on in London for the last couple of days. At least half of the capital has been looking around wondering where the famous snow that we've all been hearing about has got to, while those of us who live in the South-East have been perfecting our Captain Oates impersonations every time we step outside to buy a bottle of Vimto. As my mum lives in the non-Oatesy portion, and I in the heart of Titus-land, the journey home was, shall we say, interrupted.

Getting to Clapham was easy enough, but there I ground to a halt. There were so few trains going south, it was as if they were suddenly being driven by cabbies.

The departure boards weren't much help. "0633 to Sutton - on time", they declared, ignoring the inconvenient truth that 0633 was a dim and distant memory and that Sutton was for the moment as inaccessible and wondrous a concept as Narnia.

Displaying admirable (and, for me, rare) sangfroid, I opted out of the inevitable chunterfest that a prolonged spell on platform 15 would have entailed and decided to do some shopping. Trousers, I thought. Winter coat. Condensed milk. (Obviously.)

Coat first. Stick to the essentials.

I found myself torn. Groovy sheepskin-lined flying jacket, as sported by those dashing chaps from the Boden catalogue? Or functional-but-determinedly-ungroovy thermal walking jacket, as sported by those not-exactly-dashing-but-doing-their-best blokes looking wistfully into the middle distance at Black's?

I know my limits.

The boy in Black's was very polite. He allowed me a full five seconds of perusal before offering his opening gambit.

"How are you, Sir?"

Hard sell. Bastard.

"Assailed by existential angst," I replied. "Grappling with the futility of our brief sojourn on this earth, weighed down with the enormity and complexity of the myriad problems facing mankind, and staring the inevitability of our eventual demise full in the face with the haunted mien of one who has looked into the abyss too long."

"Oh."

“But, on the other hand,” I continued, before he had a chance to refute my Sartrean world view, “quite excited about the cricket. Now tell me, my good man, this garment, this '3-in-1' all weather jacket: is said Trinity as holy as the manufacturers would have us believe? Does the garment divide efficiently and seamlessly into three separate pieces?"

"Well, Sir..."

"Because it seems to me that there are only two portions: the inner and the outer.

“Yes, Sir, but..."

"Ah, I see now. You are about to tell me that when I combine the two vestments the third, and most thermally efficient, manifestation will make itself magically apparent to me, and in this you are not wrong. I like your thinking and withdraw my complaint forthwith. This is the all-weather jacket for me. It will be my lifelong companion. We will be very happy together."

"This other one’s very nice," he said feebly, gesturing towards one that appeared, from the price, to have been hand-yarned from the navel lint of Andean vicuñas. "Very warm."

"It is also one hundred pounds more expensive."

He yielded on the point, worn down by the relentlessness of my logic, and retreated, looking rather pale.

Funny, I seem to have that effect on shopkeepers. But at least I am now equipped with the toastiest coat in town.

Bring on the heatwave.

Comments

[Claire]

That opening paragraph is even longer than one of my sentences - I'm impressed!

[Lev Parikian]

Ill make up for it in the sentence after this one. Thanks.
Lev

[Mark]

Nice one cuz. that's Australian for cousin. (We like to shorten things in oz, especially test matches). I stopped reading after the cricket rant, but only so I could save up my energy for tonights contest in the city of churches. Will continue reading tomorrow. Best of luck to the england/south african composit team that only took one second innings wicket last week. Your Aussie cousin, mark

[Lev Parikian]

Thanks Mark. The 'rant' was actually (in a sideways kind of you) quite complimentary about you specifically, but it was buried in a long sentence, so maybe you fell asleep in the middle.
Hint: if you like keeping things short, perhaps allowing the opposition to score 517-1 isn't the best way to go about it...
(I have now scuppered England's chances in the rest of the series with that hubristic attack - sorry everyone).

[Mark]

I'm pretty sure that collingwood's talk of a dynasty was hubris, but not your hubristic attack. That was just (a little) misguided, like a Mitch Johnson ball. Look forward to tweeting at ya, over the next few days.

[The-Sis-In-Law]

I'd have liked to have seen you in that sartorially challenging flying jacket. They look a bit chilly around the gluteals though.

[The Flame haired temptress]

Jolly nice he looks in it too. It's my turn to find something toasty. I don't think it will be from
Blacks somehow!