A life less lived...

Life seemed peaceful. The days were sunny, birds chirped lightly, and all the whifflewaffle seemed rather content to be whiffling and waffling harmoniously. It all seemed too good to be true, and oddly enough, it turned out to be one of those times when the forces-that-be condescend to lend some truth to these paranoid phrases.

Even now i recall the sheer tranquility of that time - made, as it was, to lend truth to usually rancid claim of being the lull before the buggering thunderstorm. It all started with my favourite pair of trousers, or to be more specific, the pocket of my trousers, or to be simply idiotic in being this specific, my right-hand trouser pocket.

It started innocently enough, with my discovering the odd dime in my sock and the occasional slice of toast stuck to my shin. Pondering longish over these unconnected pieces of evidence, I landed, with a fair thud i might add, at the conclusion of the presence of a hole existing peacefully at the wily vortex where the lining of my pockets met.

Oh.. a mere trifle, you might say, and right you would be too if you were one of those content to experience life from the comfortable depths of your armchair. Me, as my nanny will no doubt attest, I was always one to take life head-on, and given this predilection for gory battle, i do tend to get in the way of life's blind jabs, and this one, i must admit, got me fairly square on the sniffer.

Coming to an- as it turns out - ill-advised conclusion that this was a matter to be dealt with at leisure, I walked on, on the merry path called life. It was not long after that i began to contemplate suicide.

All of a sudden, my life seemed to be full of little objects that could fit into my pocket, seemingly with the sole purpose of falling out of it. They not only seemed to able to choose the trouser pocket they went into, but also the opportune moment they slid out of it.

I cannot forget the day when - in the middle of an impassioned intellectual debate with the Chairman at the Tway's club when i thumped my foot rather loudly on the wooden floor – (we were talking about M'Lady Betsy's form at the summer derby - a filly i had my heart and quite a few quid on ) and my trouser hem discharged out seven coins of varying denomination, a briar pipe and a pair of nose-hair clippers, the aforementioned not an inch away from the venerable chairman's gleaming brogues.

I won't even go into the agony of the Awagean ball that i attended, and my ill-fated waltz with the pretty daughter of the owner of the "Wailing Ale". (Suffice to say, my line of credit at the Wailer was withdrawn indefinitely.) Or recount the horrifying coincidence of my teaching the seventh graders at Chilton High when Gerald got the flu, my five-year old niece's birthday and my carrying a roll of rather pink satin ribbon for her birthday party in my pocket.

Haggard, jumpy and well wary of even the hint of a habit of stuffing life's essentials into my pockets, I had begun to seriously consider the prospect of spending the rest of the summer in roomy polka-dotted PJ's tending to my tomatoes at the farm, far away from all civil company when my tailor rushed back to town. Clucking with sympathy, he swiftly proceeded to deposit the offending pair into the dark recesses of his shop, offered me a cup of weakish tea, promising to sew in reinforced steel linigs on the pockets of all my trousers and sent me on my way.

After a month long diet consisting mainly of carrots and brandy, i approached something close to my good cheer - while not being reckless enough to venture into society yet, but well enough to look forward to contemplate what tomorrow might bring with not an unduly heavy heart.

A sordid tale I know, but one that had to be told.

A lot of clay to build in my bricks...

It’s interesting how people take my views rather too seriously… and if I were not wiser by the virtue of my follies, I’d probably do the same. Well.. here I was gloating like an egg that had found its bull’s eye .. nestling cheerfully in the yolky satisfaction of my, even if I do say so myself, well-expounded “white trouser” theory.

Until of course, I got pronged, rather rudely I might add, by a few bristling women. “I wear white trousers, don’t you know” as if by the very fact that they did, they completely turned the fact that they were, in fact, exactly the kind of women I was talking about, on its head.

Well… I was jolted, I must admit, by the fury of these hustling bustling women but it does incite me to cast further light on this much-argued about theory of mine. Let me first bung in a disclaimer. Like all theories worth their yolk, “The White Trouser Theory” does the usual thing – rustle up a conclusion first and then build a complicated routine around it. In the face of counter-arguments, cold logic and even hard evidence, the WTT like all theories will simply build natty little corollaries which will, to all intents and purposes, render the theory gloriously impotent, but will not let it relinquish the sensational glory that surrounded its introduction.

And now to business ... Oh yes I agree –– there’s nothing elaborate about white trousers anymore, white trousers have lost their elitist halo, and now every woman worth her waistline has a pair to boot. While this does take away from the trifling detail of relevance from my theory, it does go rather a long way in proving its original premise. After all, where does a woman get her hankering for a new couch .. an antique for the hallway.. and oh before I forget.. a new piece of apparel such as .. hmm.. let’s see now.. a white trouser from? From the happy coincidence of seeing it owned by, with or on another woman, of course! And who are these women next door craving to be like? The quintessential “white trouser” woman.. thus spreading the elitism thinner.. and thinner.. until of course the next “white trouser” comes along .. ridiculously hard to get ... prohibitively expensive .. thoroughly impractical.. and positively leaking style at its seams. And the entire cycle starts over.

And all this while, us enlightened species watch for these tell-tale signs.. and stay well clear of these moody women.

Beer, anyone?