Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.
Well it was a Sunday, and unusually I wasn't working. What could I do on this classic bright but cold November day? Well go out with wife and daughter to buy clothes of course. And not just buying clothes, but buying clothes in an out of town warehouse store about twenty minutes away.
The wife had received some sort of offer from the clothes retailer Matalan and had wanted to buy clothes for myself and our daughter for Christmas (thus losing the element of surprise) as well as stuff for herself. As she needed to make sure it fitted I was dragged kicking and screaming (in my mind at least) to go with them.
I was going to miss the game between Arsenal and Tottenham. But that didn't really matter as a West Ham fan like me it was as if you were watching a fight between two people you don't like knowing that the winner was going to be very,very,smug.
Now here I should explain something. There are probably few things where men clearly superior to women but one of them I would argue is in choosing clothes. I'm not saying whether the choice is correct, just in making the decision. A man would notice an item he liked, buy it and that was that. On the other hand there seems to be two particular ways a woman does this.
The first option is to pick an item of clothing, have doubts,then go for two, three, four similar items before returning to the first item for another look.
The second option is to buy about four items, take them home,make a decision and then take the unwanted bits back to the store for a refund.
In both cases they will ask you, as the partner, for your opinion and when you give it proceed to ignore it. Especially when the answer was approving.
So I knew that my brain was going to be turned to mush by all of this. That's why I hate clothes shopping with the wife and now she's a teenager my daughter.And it was also why I took a book with me. Because I didn't want to take the library books in case I lost them, and the Beatrice Webb was a large hardback it could only be The Roman Hat Mystery by Ellery Queen.
Llantrisant, where the Matalan was was about twenty minutes away from where we lived. When we arrived there another of my pet hates revealed itself. You will find as we continue this blog that as I've grown older I'm not really a "Christmas/New Year type of person. I just accept it and hope it goes quickly. However if there's one thing I really,really hate it's Christmas in November for the simple reason that it's November,
Already the TV ads have appeared and worse than that those TV Christmas channels which shows American TV films where somebody has a crisis in their lives only to be resolved when they find "the true meaning of Christmas".I felt sick to discover they'd commenced at the end of October.
The shops, in November have turned themselves into a Christmas wonderland of things to buy as a gift and watch the recipient generally ignore later. Matalan was not an exception. I wanted to take a picture but it would've been too obvious and people would have just asked why. Let's just say gaudy would be an apt description.
As it happened it came quickly quite clear that Matalan (other than a pack of five socks) had nothing that was in my size. Let me digress here for a moment. Since my incident with the Subway "hearty Italian" baguette. and my front teeth I'd gone off eating baguettes,crisps and sweets. And because of especially not eating crisps whilst I'm not saying I'm an Adonis with a six pack I've gotten noticeably slimmer.
I was therefore surplus to requirements. The wife and daughter had garnered in about ten minutes a group of blouses for them to try out in the changing room before whittling down to a lesser number to work out later. In that moment my wife had an inspirational moment.She turned to me and said "Why don't you read the book in the car?"
She didn't need to say it twice. I was off.
So that was why I claim to be the only man ever to have read an Ellery Queen crime novel in a retail car park in Wales. I want a plaque for eternity.
And not only did I read it, I finished it. So let me say that the opinion I gave in my last post has not changed. It was readable but dated. Thank you Ellery anyway.
This of course means there is a new book to pick from the great unread, That book is:
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| 1116 - C S Forester - The Commodore |
I've read one Forester book before, The Gun and I didn't like it. This is however the first Horatio Hornblower book to come my way so I have some hope for it.
Until the next time,
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