MUTTON MAN

Is there a term that can be applied to males that sums up the desperation and lack of sartorial self-awareness as acutely as ‘mutton’ does for females? If so, I may need to apply it to myself. Whilst out strolling with Mrs M after dropping Ginger and Blondie in their Saturday morning future career training course (drama) – I say future career training course – it is in actual fact us trying to develop a late pension for ourselves as Ginger has all the love of theatre without the desire to actually perform so her life is mapped to jump from school to St Martin’s to become a designer, her ability to team colour schemes occupies the fine spectrum of maverick to genius and even her most simple doodles carry all the personality and nuance of curious Picasso and Caravaggio hybrid. As for Blondie, she is currently cast in two different shows as well as a concert and is now displaying the acting talent that most RADA graduates would weep at (I know, drama students are supposed to cry but work with me here), with all the subtlety and depth of an actor four times her age she can make you believe you are sharing a room with Will Ferrell as Mugatu. We see Sylvia Young looming large. The fact that there is a sibling discount at the drama group is obviously neither here nor there and that it gets them out of our faces for just a short while is purely coincidental. *

There is no end to our pride when our children perform sections
of Zoolander to strangers. Really.

I may have taken a different tangent to the one I began. Mrs M and I were strolling with purpose towards our local yet over-familiar coffee shop, which is lovely, don’t get me wrong.  The coffee is excellent, the cakes are superb and the staff worthy of all the hyperbole available to them, it is just that I don’t necessarily feel the need to share my name with them in order to have it used as a sentence filler in conversation. It feels like I am being verbally bludgeoned into submission with my own name, all I want is to sit down, eat their supremely moist carrot cake, sip the rich creamy flat white with the pretty leaf pattern in the top and chat with Mrs M about all the stuff we need to do in our house but are very unlikely to get round to doing. Instead we are subjected to a conversation, harmless in itself, where we hear our names so often that we are frankly embarrassed that our parents chose to label us such and I end up shuffling from foot to foot staring at anything but the server like teenager struggling to be polite at a funeral.

I attempted this design once at home. It ended up
looking like a merkin.

So we were strolling, with purpose, when we were distracted by the one sign that, in these straightened times, can stop a parent that is so used to channelling any spare cash into the lives of their offspring (our choice, I am not complaining) CLOSING DOWN SALE! Like, clothes that are normally expensive, ermm, quite cheap. We literally galloped into the shop and started rummaging. And found two pairs of trousers, trousers that once upon a time would have been a respectable if not colourful choice for a gentleman of my age. They were bought, I felt smug that I had some new trousers that could be described as fashionable.

In my head I am seeing this. But maybe with
my eyes open, and a little less energetic.

This is where the problem lies. The collective male yoof of today have subverted fashion. They have cruelly adopted ‘respectable’ as their tribe style. Look at them all, crowding on street corners with their clean trainers, their brightly coloured slacks, neatly ironed tops and jackets too! They are wearing fitted jackets! They are the very vision of how my Mum wanted me to dress in the 80s when all I wanted to do was wear some ripped up jeans, muddy my Vans and slip on a denim jacket with rock bands written all over it in marker pen. So now, as a mature male who has finally come round to my mother’s way of thinking, wanting to buy clothes that have personality yet say I am mature enough to raise children, I do it only to realise that I am now basically dressing as a teenage boy. Damn you teen boys and your subversive fashions. I now look like I am trying to slip under the age radar and hang out with One Direction or Olly Murs’s Dad attempting to be as cool as his son. (I have no real knowledge of Olly Murs or his Dad – I am sure his Dad is great).

What I may have achieved.

 

My colleagues were kind to me when I turned up at work in my new trousers. Some would say overly kind. I could see in their eyes that most of them thought ‘Really?!’ but I suppose it was a talking point. Actually, as I was walking to workI turned a corner only for a stranger to physically recoil at the sight of my slacks whilst gasping 'Woah!' a little too loud for my liking.

But what really rings in my ears is what Blondie said to me as I left for work, ‘Hey Mister, we need to talk about your jeans…. Carrot Man.’ This was accompanied by a look of… well I can’t really describe the look… but it wasn’t pride. Then Ginger went through all of the things I could team the trousers up with, rejecting each one and finally deciding that they, 'don't really go with much Dad.'

So my lesson learnt here are that my children are now of an age where what I wear matters to them and they are likely to vet any outfit I put on from now. I could have fun with this. Wait until they see my aubergine pantaloons.

All said an done it could be much worse, I could be wearing Super Dry.

 

* Please note that all references to our children’s talents are subject to the usual narrow view of a parent.