Sunday 22 December 2013

Back to black


Yesterday, I was wandering around our flea-market in the pouring rain when I spotted a large, black, police-issue, Gannex raincoat hanging up. I tried it on and it fitted, so I bought it.

Although wearing a black raincoat is the perfect excuse to wear my black Crockett and Jones booties, I now have to buy some black trousers to go with it, and a black Kangol rain-hat as well. One could not possibly wear pale tweed trousers with this very austere looking mac, so now I am going to have to go out today and get the rest of the outfit.

Like a lot of arty bastards of the late 1970s, I used to wear nothing but black all the time, mainly because choosing from your wardrobe every morning was made so much simpler by doing so. Lou Reed thought the same thing. Then it became a bit of a ritual, and I try not to adhere to any rituals other than the nightly drinking of beer.

Then, as I entered my forties, I noticed that some middle-aged men wore black as a sort of uniform, denoting their artiness. I know some 60+ year old Art School teachers who still wear black, and - worse - tuck their black T-shirts into the top of their trousers in the Summer, emphasising the little gut which wraps itself around all men who do not spend hours in the gym after the age of fifty.

It was this point at which I decided that I had reached the age when I could get away with wearing tweeds and autumnal colours. This was the beginning of my ill-fated attempt to appear avuncular. The actual result was even more frightening to children than if I had worn a full-faced, black rubber mask.

Just before I reached forty, I was working in Germany - Cologne, actually - when I found a very similar, austere black raincoat which was a Deutsches Bundesbahn (German railway) inspector's top-coat. I wore it all the time.

Late one night, I hopped on a train to go home, and at the next stop, a young woman got on and sat right opposite me. Eventually, her eyes fell on the tiny little silver stud in the lapel of my coat and a look of absolute horror and dread came over her face. The little stud was stamped 'D.B.', but it was so small and insignificant, that I had not bothered to remove it.

I then realised that she had taken advantage of the late hour by not bothering to buy a ticket, and thought that - at any minute - I would ask her for it so I could inspect it. The fine for riding on a train without a ticket was extremely severe - the equivalent of hundreds of pounds, or even thousands.

To my shame, rather than calm her down by letting her know I was a simple, English civilian, I revelled in the situation until she jumped off at the next stop to get away from me.

This was an amazing insight for me at the time - I had a very small inkling of what it must have been like to be wearing an SS badge in the same country in the early 1940s, and how it must have bestowed a sense of absolute power on previously impotent, emotionally bereft men.

This latest black raincoat has two epaulettes on the shoulders which H.I. has been trying to persuade me to cut off. I had other plans for them, though.

I went onto eBay and found a site which sold the small, chrome numbers that police pin to their epaulettes, and I bought two 4s and two 9s, for only £5.20, delivered.

Anyone over a certain age will remember a fictitious bobby in Britain called 'P.C.49'. If ever there was an avuncular policeman, it was P.C.49. As far as I remember, he was a proper plod who was kind to children (when he wasn't clipping them round the ear), but very stern with petty criminals, who he always apprehended - sometimes with the help of children.

The trouble is that there are no policemen on duty now who are old enough to remember P.C.49, and I am a bit worried about being collared by one of them for impersonating a member of their own calling, no matter how half-heartedly.

In any case, H.I. said that she thought it would be a 'wanky' thing to do for a feeble joke, so I might just put the numbers in a drawer when they arrive. I had a couple of the above-mentioned beers when I bought them too, which may have clouded my judgement.

I'll let you know what I decide.

19 comments:

  1. Historical note: PC.C49 preceded Dixon of Dock Green, whose number was 7 hundred and something.

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  2. Jack Warner nearly gave up doing 'Dixon' after an episode showed children stuffing tissue paper up the returned money chute on old phone boxes. The day after the episode was shown on TV, almost every phone box in the UK had tissue up the refund hole.

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    1. He was shot by a gay burglar too, I seem to recall. That gave them ideas.

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    2. I thought that would make you prick up your ears. Before Dirke Bogarde achieved real fame, he shot and killed Dixon, who later came back to life.

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  3. Maybe just pin the numbers to your bare chest and show them off in the bedroom for H.I alone. Less trouble all the way around

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  4. You look rather benign and grandfatherly in avuncular garb. Gannex or not, I wonder if even John Lennon would get away with a black raincoat at sixty something.

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    1. He would now, but he couldn't then. He got shot, didn't he?

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    2. Oh actually, he was wearing a fur coat I think. He had about 2000 of them in an air-conditioned room downstairs.

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  5. Do we get a picture of you in it?

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  6. As long as you don't wear Sherlock's deerstalker...

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  7. Mr EM used to wear an old RAF greatcoat in the day (late 1960s) when it was very fashionable among male students to wear ex-military surplus. I found it (and him) very attractive. In fact my father had worn one legitimately as far back as I could remember but Freud probably had a word for it.

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    1. Yes, he would have. Two things going on, one being the old wartime propaganda about women fancying anything in a uniform, and the other being some about incest?

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