Saturday 28 September 2019

"It's blue again

I  suppose?" 
    "Um...yes - but it goes with everything else."
    "I know you like blue Cat but really! This pink one...."
    "I am not going to wear pink!"
I need (as opposed to want) a new shirt. My favourite charity shop didn't have anything that could pass for "best" so I had to go hunting elsewhere. 
Now let it be said here that I have a strong aversion to clothes shopping. I will tolerate food shopping - we need to eat - and I am happy to prowl through book stores and (if I can find them) yarn shops. Clothes? No. 
I suppose part of the problem is that I resent paying extortionate prices for "fashion". I expect my clothes to last more than "a season". (I have clothes that are far more than twenty years old.) As I don't need to "dress up" to go to the office I can get around in jeans and t-shirts most of the time.
And I happen to like the colour blue - and a lot of other colours as well. At the same time I don't care for pink or orange. As a kitten I was forced to wear pink  by my maternal grandmother because "little girls wear pink".  Thankfully my paternal grandmother didn't believe that and, to the best of my knowledge, never gave me anything pink. Her views may have been coloured by having two boys because she tended to make me sturdy overalls for around home and green or blue dresses for "best". 
Attempts were made by my maternal grandmother to get Middle Cat and the Black Cat to wear frilly, fancy pink things too. They objected as well. Middle Cat was going through the stage of wanting to be a boy. (She is now glad she is not.) Her idea of being dressed was a football guernsey and football boots. She now owns a dress. (It was for the wedding of her eldest.) I don't own a dress at all - just a couple of skirts for "must not wear trousers" emergencies. 
Middle Cat will wear pink now. It suits her colouring much better than mine. She can wear that peachy sort of orange and lime too - and they are not my thing at all.   
And the woman in the shop knows all this...she has had cause to use the professional services of Middle Cat and thus knows us both. It is of course also her business to know what her customers might want.
She gave me a look and said, "I knew this was going to happen. Stay there."
She went out to the tiny back store room and, a few moments later, she returned - with a plain, pale blue shirt...in my size
    "Here you are. Go and try it on."
Being an obedient cat I did as I was told. It was fine. It will last me a few years. It was marked down to half the original price. I bought it.
Now why can't clothes shopping always be like that?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Not asking for much are you Cat? I agree though - why are men's shirts so much cheaper? It has to be the fashion thing! Chris