Ruminations

Blog dedicated primarily to randomly selected news items; comments reflecting personal perceptions

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Binge-Out Time!

Well, time to renew our wardrobes for Spring. We've re-arranged our clothes cupboards, our bureaus, taken out those items we consider redundant to our needs, our tastes, and taken them to the Sally Ann Thrift Shop. But we're also there to shop. To look around, to move the clothes hangers about, to scrutinize the wares and weigh their interest to us. Amazing how many items of costly clothing people purchase, shove to the back of their closets, never wear, then give to charity. And good on them.

We shop separately; he goes over to the men's wear, of course, also to the books and the DVDs. I spend most of my time over at the ladies' apparel, and a wee mite of time, when we're good and ready to leave, scouring the books. I look for items that may appeal to our favourite - and only - grandchild, and come away with an aqua la Senza hoodie, a copy of Jack London's "The Call of the Wild", another of Jules Verne's "Journey to the Center of the Earth".

Mind, I've also picked up several pairs of shorts, a pair of long black pants, and a number of nifty little summer jerseys; several long-sleeved, the rest short-sleeved or sleeveless, and I feel them to be more than sufficient to restore my wardrobe. Nothing that I purchase is anything but cotton, it's breathable, comfortable, eminently washable, and feels good, looks good. I avoid like the Plague, anything with lettering on it.

As for him, he isn't that particular. Most of the summer short-sleeved shirts he picks up do have lettering on them. Here's the run-down: a long-sleeved shirt with a detailed map of Afghanistan printed on it; one yellow short-sleeved shirt with the legend "I Climbed The Great Wall", another in black, same legend. One shirt reading "New House NinJa", another with "2005 Alberta Centennial. How about "Eastwood Division: Growing and Guiding Together."

But the most appealing would have to be a shirt with the following printed on it: "Joint International Observer Group, 1998 Election, Cambodia". Now, can't you just imagine? Wearing that in public, the respect you'd engender, and then the awkwardness that would result when someone feeling fairly bold, might question how you came by it, and was it interesting to be in Cambodia? Most expensive item at $12.95, a hooded yellow and black rainjacket.

When I'm feeling really bored, all these shirts will constitute reading material. Something like the fascination with reading all the hype on cereal boxes; nutritional values, constituents, recipes, that kind of thing, while having breakfast. Wait, there's more, there's the black shirt with the small print on the front: "we're cool", and on the reverse, "We Live At School"; under it the graphic of a notional globe, and inside it, a figure of a girl, a boy.

Ah, but he's also tried on several pairs of trousers, and the dark-brown cotton twill trousers with the Versace label is impressive. Fits nicely, as does the tan-coloured RW & CO pair, and the beige Denim Riders. That'll do him for a while. Our wardrobes nicely beefed up. Oops, there's that other short-sleeved, drab green shirt, the word "DUKE" emblazoned in camouflage colours, and below it a leering devil silhouette.

A trifling matter, wearing clothing replete as conversation pieces. Gauche, by some estimates, including my own. You'd never guess this is the same man who once dressed daily with excruciating attention to detail, in suit and tie, glossy shoes and pocket puff. That was then, this is now. We're not budgeting, we're simply succumbing to the urge to recycle.

He's amassed quite the collection of detective novels. Along with a veritable tome of a volume, "The Western Heritage", replete with glossy impressions of the great art and architecture of the world down through the ages. The publication covers western heritage - from early civilizations to the civilizing event known as the Holocaust.

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