The style of the man

When I was a young man in the North of England in the late 60s and early 70s, I would occasionally go out with friends for the odd drink in pubs on a Saturday nights.

You would wear your best suit, a clean shirt, your sharpest tie. Those were the days!

See anyone in a pub in the North of England in a suit recently (apart from a business executive on his way home)?

I often wonder when this tradition died. Maybe when Margaret Thatcher came along and decided that people in the North of England were not supposed to work any more, and the (mass) unemployed could not afford suits either .....

My father would have understood the suits and ties though. To his dying day (at he age of 66 in 1988) he never wore jeans. They had first appeared in the UK during WW2, brought over needless to say by the Americans. He would never wear jeans as "they did not look smart", and he was quite insistent that working-class and not very well-off as we were, we should always try to look the part. When working round the house (he was a talented handyman), he would always wear casual trousers, never jeans.

Myself I inherited this partly. I have never worn jeans for work,  only at home for casual use. In the 1980s in Manchester, they still insisted on men (at least the few who still had jobs) wearing ties in offices as well. Even on startling hot days - now there's a thought, a startling hot day in Manchester?

IT departments in continental Europe have always been more relaxed about dress sense, but Mondays to Fridays without fail, I would wear casual trousers, not jeans, for work. Habit, trying to look the part, part of my father's inheritance, I suppose.

Since the robbery the other day, I have resumed the habit of wearing casual trousers, as if I were still working in an office rather than trying to eke out a mediocre living working for myself. Given the supply and demand situation (3 pairs of jeans less and all these smartish trousers sitting round the cupboard unused) it makes sense. Psychologically it could give me a lift (not the sort of lift a proper job in line with my outstanding talents or a secure income would give me, but that is another matter).

Times change, and dinosaurs may look out of place among the modern fauna, but for once I may not be growing old disgracefully.