The Wrong Trousers

But first, another bit of dream.

One of my former colleagues moved to Australia and has recently started a family. I was never exactly friendly with the guy, so I don't keep in touch by any active means. He was one of the Salespeople I didn't actively dislike, but he made my life more difficult that it needed to be often enough that I certainly didn't like him much. So when he turned up in a recent dream, I was a little surprised.

It started out in the typical anxiety dream fashion - one of my teeth spontaneously popped out of its gum, and another one was extremely loose (possibly bleeding)... I'm not sure this was the same dream, to be honest. It doesn't quite flow from one to the other but, the next thing I remember is meeting up with this former colleague on a sunny day, in a park. He's wheeling along his offspring in a buggy, his wife wandering nearby. He spouts platitudes about the old days, working together... and then suddenly says something about working together again... In Australia. Of course, such a move hold some unhappy associations with me (admittedly more to do with New Zealand than Oz, though Sydney was a stopover on the flight there) and the shock (coupled with his slightly dopey, over-earnest grin) was enough to wake me up.

Still, weird. I know I've been talking about changing career recently... but am I really associating that kind of change with the act of moving to the other side of the planet?

So. Trousers. Or, more specifically, jeans.

I recently discovered that I had worn holes in the upper-inside-leg of both pairs of light blue jeans I own. One pair is a positively ancient pair of 501s, the other, a more recent random, non-designer label from a department store. My first attempt at replacing either or both netted me another pair of dark blue jeans (honestly, I'm not sure what I was thinking!) and I only got round to making another attempt earlier this week, now that I'm working in the area of Oxford Street.

Popping into the nearest branch of Next one lunchtime, I managed to find a pair of light blue, button-fly jeans that I liked the look of, but they didn't have my size (32S) on the racks. I picked up the next best thing (34S) because sizes on jeans tend to be a little... shall we say "non-standard", and I've had pairs of jeans that were ostensibly the same size, yet which fitted very differently. When I got to the checkout, I asked if they had the ideal size in stock, and the cashier - somewhat reluctantly - sloped out back to check, reporting moments later that they were currently out of stock. I liked the jeans, though, so I bought the size they had. And, really, what kind of difference would two inches really make?

Gentle reader, let me tell you exactly what kind of difference a mere two inches can make to a man's jeans.

The first day I wore them, before I'd even left my home for work, I knew I was in trouble. Sure, there was lots more 'breathing room' (gents, you know what I mean here, right?), but these jeans - which were designed to, quote, "sit low on the hip" - just kept slipping down. Inside the flat, all was fine - I could hitch them up regularly and no-one would know the difference... but the moment I stepped out and started walking down the street, it felt as though they'd be round my ankles within a few paces.

So I took to holding them up through the pockets of my winter coat.

I managed to get a seat on the train into work and, looking down, I saw the crotch protruding from the hem of my coat - which hangs over my hips when standing - and realised that the problem was worse than I'd originally suspected. Were it not for the coat, my underwear would have been very visible to all around me.

Seriously, I would have looked like the most middle-class rapper ever.

So, on a whim, I switched my route to work so that I'd be arriving via Oxford Circus, thus giving myself the opportunity to peruse the menswear section of Marks & Sparks for a belt... And you wouldn't believe how difficult it was to find one of them in my size! A 32 inch waist must be the menswear equivalent of size zero, or something. I guess I'm lucky that my waistline hasn't deviated much over the last 20 years or so, but it does seem that my size is constantly out of stock (in certain styles, in certain shops... so perhaps I'm just too fussy?). Wandering round M&S just after they open, when their staff are still calm and stress-free enough to greet a passing customer, was a very weird experience while I was having to hold my trousers up... Getting the belt into my backpack (because I could hardly say "No, thank you, I don't need a bag, gimme a moment and I'll put the belt on straight away!") was an embarrassing scene because it was utterly uncooperative and just wanted to unravel... And every moment I was wrestling with the belt, my jeans were slipping further down my hips.

When I got to the office, I dashed straight into the lavatory to put the belt on and, on another whim, tried pulling my jeans down without unbuttoning them.

Yep, they came all the way down.

With minimal effort.

Just let that image sink in for a moment, there.

Thankfully, with the belt, the jeans fit brilliantly... I still have the extra breathing room, but don't need to worry about finding my trousers round my ankles unexpectedly.

And that, after all, is all a man can ask of his trousers.