Thursday 18 November 2021

I am accidentally wearing

matching socks and polo shirt today.  I am not sure how this happened. I am also not sure how I have actually happened to notice this.

My usual clothing consists of jeans, socks, ankle boots and tops according to the season. Provided my clothes are clean and tidy I am not the sort of cat who fusses about them. I see no point. I work from home. I have worked from home for many years. There is no need to put on something special to go to work.

When I do need to go to a meeting I can change into something "better" - if I need to do so. Lately meetings have tended to be of the "Zoom"  variety.  It seems people do not dress for those in quite the same way. (One of my colleagues recently appeared in his night attire - understandably so. It was around two o'clock in the morning where he was and we all know one another well enough not to worry about that sort of thing.)

I suppose the habit of not spending a lot of money on clothes is one I picked up from my mother. She did not spend a lot of money on her clothes, indeed she made most of her own and ours. Recently I threw out several "around home" shirts she had made for the Senior Cat - threw out in the sense my BIL will now use them as rags when he is working in his shed. The things she made tended to last - and last. 

We actually complemented each other quite well in that respect. I would knit things. Mum would sew things. On one trip abroad my mother came home with a knitting kit. She had seen it in a shop window and, most unusually for her, decided that she liked it so much that she wanted it...but I had to knit it. It was knitted sideways and she had never attempted such a thing. It was also knitted in a variety of yarns - something else she had never attempted. I must admit that the finished garment suited her but it was something that, like almost everything else she owned, would not have suited me at all. We often clashed over that. I would make whatever she wanted me to make. She kept trying to get me to wear things I would never have felt comfortable in. It was the same with Middle Cat. 

When Middle Cat married, her MIL made clothes for her. P... had three daughters to dress as well. They knew what they wanted and the styles she made were much more modern and up to date. P.... might have only worn black or dark brown herself - she was very traditionally a married Greek woman in that sense - but she knew her daughters wanted to dress differently.  Our mother did not always approve. I sometimes wonder what she would now make of the way my nephew's partners dress. I wonder too what my grandmothers would make of these things.

I do notice these things of course - in a casual sort of way. But each morning I simply reach for clean socks and clean underwear and if the socks match the shirt that is a bonus. Let's face it how many people can see my socks at the same time as they can see my shirt? Does it matter unless I am going to a meeting?

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