Outside the pub.One of the consolations if not the outright pleasures of being the age I am is that I can wear what I like when I like. The other day, as I walk home in the company of a neighbour, she observes: "Your shirt tail is hanging out." She could see it under my jacket. I know that it is hanging out. I wear it that way deliberately. It is a flannel shirt with a generous tail and it gives me pleasure to sport it. It is, above all, comfortable. She is married to a retired hospital consultant, a member of a profession reputed to be among the best dressed in the country, when not wearing hospital gowns. "Thank you for pointing it", I say looking for a formula that she will understand. "I regard it as a smock". I say. "And I would like you to do the same."
At the top of Mount Pleasant, I pass two men of strikingly similar appearance. Both have grey, beaver beards and wear rimless glasses. Both sport flat tweed caps and fawns jackets. The are talking with animation. The light glints on their spectacles. They must be brothers, twins perhaps. It strikes me that, while you often see siblings together, it is not so often that you see them, (at least instantly recognisable as such), in middle age. Tweedledum and Tweedledee? Not quite: they were getting on too well. No sign of a battle.
6 comments:
I heartily agree about comfortable bum-worthy clothes. And now I think about it perhaps there are those at the Blogger's Retreat who glance across at us lunching and say to themselves "Perhaps they're brothers." Glancing again they shake their heads and amend the comment, "At least they go to the same tailor."
Another possibility about the possible twins is that they may be gay. This is not something I would normally comment on since almost all such comment tends to go astray. I mention it because I have seen elderly, clearly gay male couples who resemble each other and I have reflected on an earlier, perhaps less observant, age when no one would have bothered to bring this to anyone's attention. Typical of such a union was Nigel Hawthorne who had lived with his partner for twenty-five years and only decided to "out" himself because a pitifully under-employed journalist had thought it worthwhile to publicise his "discovery". I sympathise with campaigners against discrimination like Peter Tatchell but not with his belief that all gays should out themselves as an act of solidarity. If no one's complaining (and why should they?) why not the tranquil life?
Excellent Photograph: this seems to stand Plato's idea of shadows- in-the-cave on its head! The object seems a pale immitation of the interesting and very real shadow that it casts.
BB You mean they may have grown to look like each other like dogs and the people with whom they are associated are supposed to. Possibly. These looked and sounded like brothers.
I find that, that though capable of sympathy, I have a tendency to shy away from solidarity.
L I've always wanted to get out of that cave. I'm still trying.
Sitting here in my flannel shirt, untuked and comfortable. Enjoying your photo and observations and feeling simpatico.
Must slow down and type more carefully.
That should have been "untucked", of
course. Will try harder in future.
Very nice picture of the spectales.
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