What to Wear on Easter Sunday

What to wear on Easter Sunday?  Somehow one instinctively feels the answer is white.  We should sally forth to worship clad like Housman's cherries, 'wearing white for Eastertide'.  This is all very well if it's nice weather.  But if the rain is lashing down and you have muddy paths to negotiate, then white starts to feel like a foolish choice.

In the end I wore two different outfits this Easter.  My first was thrown on in a hurry.  It comprised trackie bottoms, ratty trainers and a big pink cardigan.  I was also wearing my glasses.  My defence here is that it was 4.55am.  And anyway, it was dark and the rest of the congregation was half asleep.  After the Easter Vigil was over nearly 3hrs later, I went home to get showered and changed into my Acting Dean's Wife clothes.

The other instinct when it comes to Easter is the urge to wear something new.  In the old days ladies would wear their new Easter bonnets.  This tradition is gallantly upheld by the lady consorts, who were sporting some fine mother-of-the-bride type millinery this year in Lichfield cathedral.  We got a good look at it as they processed in with the chaps in tricorn hats, gold chains of office and all the civic regalia that comes out on such occasions.

As you know, I'm not in a position to rush out and indulge my passion for new clothes this year.  What a good thing my oldest friend gave me that stunning coat a month or two back!  I wore it with navy wide legged linen trousers (charity shop) and a sage green slink top (charity shop) and...

Ta da!  Pink shoes!  A Christmas gift from the chancellor.  How did he know exactly what I wanted?  So clever of him to glance up and concentrate for 5 seconds while I held my laptop in front of his face, open on the Office website.

So that's my answer: wear whatever makes you feel like rejoicing on Easter Sunday.  'My love, the crucified, hath sprung to life this morrow.'

When in Doubt, Wear Black

I was asked, quite rightly, what it was I actually wore at the Grand Unveiling Ceremony of the new dean of Liverpool last week.  Clearly I raised some expectations by calling my last post 'What to Wear in Liverpool'.

It took quite some time to decide, let me tell you.  There were many clothes tried on then tossed pettishly on the floor.  Tears were shed.  Bitter words about stupid New Year's Resolutions were muttered.  I had decided on my outfit a long time in advance.  After all, we'd been keeping the dark secret of the chancellor's new job for 6 weeks until the official Downing Street announcement.  Crown Appointments are like The One Ring.  Gandalf sends you an official letter saying Keep it secret, keep it safe!  Every week the Nazgul come and peer in your window to see if you are on the phone blabbing.  So I had 6 weeks to ponder what to wear.

On the very day of heading off to Liverpool, right before packing, I decided to try it on, just to make sure.  And by some evil hormonal machination, an outfit in which I have looked stunning on any number of occasions suddenly made me look CHUNKY.  This catapulted me into a frenzy of trying-on, until finally I managed to feel happy in a pair of wide-legged jersey trousers, a slinky black top, and my magic black jacket.  Here it is:

It's a Betty Barclay piece, from a charity shop, and I believe I went mad and shelled out £12 for it.  It's made of black cotton and has a cool biker vibe to it, and most important of all, it looks nothing like the kind of thing a dean's wife ought to be wearing.

We all need magic garments that we simply have to put on in order to feel world-conquering.  This jacket is one of mine.  Even viewed through the evil prism of pre-menopausal self-loathing, this jacket is a winner.  Conversely, there are other garments which look fabulous on the hanger, are bang on trend, the right size, colour and price, which tick every imaginable box, but which make you feel like a plate of cold mashed potato when you put them on.  These should be given at once to a sister or dear friend.

DAY 42--Free Velvet Jacket

All right then.  You obviously like the whole clothes parcel/clothes swap idea.  So who'd like a free black long-line velvet jacket, then?  It's Dorothy Perkins, size 12, but would fit size 14 I reckon.  I bought it in a charity shop, and then a year later I mistakenly bought a near identical one in another charity shop.  I don't know about your lifestyle, but mine doesn't require me to have two velvet jackets, one to wear and one at the drycleaner's.

Here it is:

If you are a bit of a female dandy, this is the jacket for you.  It works well with jeans and boots.  (Sorry: it does not work well on a short-arse, this is a tall gal's garment)  If you'd like it, then let me know, either by leaving a comment below, or by tweeting me, and I'll post it to you.  There is one condition: you must agree to pass on one garment of your own, and tell me about it.  I know they say you shouldn't give gifts with strings attached, but this is patently nonsense.  Guitars, kites, helium balloons and yo-yos should all be given with strings attached, so I make no apology.

I have a pretty extensive collection of jackets that work well in the evening and make jeans look dressy.  Besides the black velvet one I have a black pinstriped velvet one, a teal shot satin one, a black satin jacquard one, a silvery jacquard one (which gives me a faint qualm I look like Cherie Blair in it), a tuxedo style one and finally, an ivory silk tweed one.   I also have several other jackets that are more casual.  Yes, I have too many jackets.  I have too many clothes.  I do not need to buy any new clothes.   I do not need to buy new clothes.  

Tonight I'm going to a concert in the cathedral and I shall wear the teal jacket.  It's the exact colour and sheen of a mallard drake's head.  Gorgeous.  I'll wear it with black everything.  All I shall do is remove the large jumper I'm wearing at the moment and shrug on my jacket.  Ready in a moment.  This is the brilliant thing about dressy jackets.  I commend them to you.

So get in touch if there's a velvet jacket-shaped hole in your life.  And pick out something of your own to pass on.  Ooh!  This could turn into one of those chain letter things. Within weeks you will receive 200 garments from all over the world! NOBODY HAS BROKEN THE CHAIN YET! 

DAY 41--Clothes Parcels

When I was growing up, there were few thrills to match the arrival of a large parcel of hand-me-downs from cousins, or from friends of my mother who had older girls.  (We didn't have a telly.)  Once we were sent a batch of clothes from a Canadian girl called Jane.  Clothes from abroad!  I remember a party frock, a pale pink gauze shift with long sleeves and ruffles down the  front and at the cuffs.  I adored it (although it was scratchy).  And that brown fake fur coat, with a belt and shiny plastic brown leather on the outside!  How I loved wearing that (although it creaked when I moved).  These were clothes which nobody else in the village had.  Jane from Canada, if you are reading this, THANK YOU.  You have no idea how impossibly glamorous your cast-offs were to us, back in 1970, in Pitstone, Buckinghamshire. 

Do people still send clothes parcels?  Maybe your church or favourite charity collects clothes to send to impoverished communities in Africa.  But to send them to your peers smacks of charity in the Victorian sense.  The kind of charity that the deserving poor were too proud to accept.  It was always the poor relations who are in receipt of clothes parcels.  Or the poor settlers in the Laura Ingalls Wilder books.  Remember how the pastor gave Laura a little fur cape and muff one Christmas which some rich little girl back in the East had grown out of?  And how it was prettier than Nellie Olsen's fur cape?  Three cheers, because she was a right cow, that Nellie Olsen.

The obvious exception here is maternity clothes.  We hand these on because we are so heartily sick of them after the last 6 months of pregnancy that we never wish to see them again.  Pregnant women accept them because they resent having to shell out for a new wardrobe they will only need while pregnant.  The other exception is baby clothes.  Which first time mum has not been in receipt of a bin liner full of clapped-out babygrows from some harassed but well-meaning mother-of-three?  The first-timer is inclined to turn up her nose.  Only the very best, the very newest and cutest of teeny-tiny clothes for her newborn, she thinks.  This is because the phenomenon of the Exploding Nappy of Doom has yet to impinge upon her consciousness.

But we don't send one another parcels of ordinary clothes.  We give the clothes to the charity shop, for fear that a parcel might appear insulting in some way.  It might look like a criticism of the friend's dress sense, or worse, she might think you're saying 'Hey, I've lost loads of weight! Want my old clothes, fatty?'

The reason I'm discussing this today is because earlier this week I sent a friend a pair of black boots.  (The student of this blog will be aware that I am hardly bootless as a result.)  They arrived this morning and she's delighted with them.  I think they cheered her up in the midst of this gloomy February.  Unless she's hiding it very well, she wasn't a bit insulted.  And nor would I be by a well-chosen gift of second hand clothes/footwear/accessories.  So I will bear that in mind in future when I'm about to pack up a load of stuff for the charity shop.  I commend this practice to you all.  Especially if you are my size and have lots of designer clothes you are getting tired of.

DAY 19

I've learnt from yesterday's mistake and remembered to take a nice eBay type picture of today's key piece before I put it on:

There we are, a rather lovely top from a charity shop that didn't know Ghost was a designer label and therefore didn't charge very much for it.  This is always a bit of a dilemma for someone like me, brought up with a code of scrupulous Nonconformist honesty.  If I find money on the pavement I feel I ought to take it to the police, or put it in the collection.  I point out to shop assistants that they've given me too much change.  Likewise in charity shops when I see an absolute bargain, a little voice inside me (it's my mum's voice, actually) urges me to tell them they're undercharging.  'You do realise this is genuine handmade lace, don't you?'  Happily the reply is usually, 'Ooh, is it love? It's ever so pretty, do you want it in a bag?'  I then shrug and put an extra pound or two in the donation box to shut my mother up.  My rule of thumb is that I only snap up such bargains if I actually like them.  I never buy them in order to make a killing on eBay.  That would be scurrilous.  Unless I donated a portion of the profits back to the charity I'd just ripped off, of course.  Charity Shopping ethics: a whole subject in its own right.

As you can see, this black and white top tests yesterday's 'Never Wear a Smock Unless you are a Hardy Peasant' diktat.  To be brutally honest, I doubt if I'd have given it a second glance if it hadn't been for the label.  Shameful but true.  But as it happens, I was pleasantly surprised.  It does not make me look like a pillar box.  You can probably just about see in the photo that it has a series of tiny tucks just below that empire line black ribbon.  This has a merciful flattening effect.  The ribbon also ties round the back, so the entire garment can be pulled in nice and trim, rather than 'flapping about like Fanny Craddock's pastry' as my grandma used to say.  She had no opinion of Fanny Craddock.

With this... yes, I will be brave and call it a smock, I am wearing skinny jeans.  If I go out I will put on boots, but right now I'm wearing fake Uggs just to keep warm.  I'm also wearing a black cardigan which really does flap about like the proverbial pastry.  It's one of those ones with pointy bits, like a handkerchief hem on a dress.  Is it called ballerina style?  I have no idea.  But if you are wearing one, it's probably a good idea to stay away from working machinery.  I believe it's M&S seconds, bought from the New Life Charity Warehouse in Cannock.

DAY 8

Today is the sabbath, a sort of Anglican via media between slobbing about clothes and party wear.  I am wearing brown treggings.  Yes, brown.  These were absolutely my last purchase of 2011, bought on the internet on New Years eve from M&S with some Christmas vouchers.  We tend to get a range of vouchers each year, and there is an understanding that any M&S vouchers are rightfully mine.  It is my own understanding, but I am happy to impose it on everyone else.  Occasionally there has to be a bit of horse trading, in which I hand over book tokens and the like.

So: M&S brown treggings, £19.95.  Size 10.  In old money, size 14.  They are also long, because we must be constantly vigilant now we are in the 50-70 age bracket, that we are not wearing our trousers 2in too short.  Why this happens to people, I don't know.  You'd think with loss of bone density all our trouser cuffs would start trailing in the dirt, but this is manifestly not the case.

I am also wearing this top (which I can't be bothered to try and describe):

I decided against posting pictures of me in my daily outfit.  The thought of 366 dodgy photos appearing any time anyone searched Catherine Fox on Google images was too ghastly to contemplate--even if I am the only person ever to conduct such a search.  Instead I pretended I was selling the garment on eBay and took a rather bad photo of it hanging on the back of the bedroom door.  It's Oasis, size 12 and it came from one of the charity shops of the West Midlands region.

I wore it with my filthy pale tan boots, which I may re-brand as my mid tan boots because that sounds nicer.  And because I was venturing out, I wore a coat: dark brown fake suede, but with genuine shaggy crinkly fur (which has a proper name that is currently eluding me) collar and cuffs.  I bought this coat many years ago when I was going up to London to impress publishers into buying my judo book proposal.  It was from TKMaxx, and I don't know how much it cost.  Outfits bought to impress publishers belong in a separate moral universe where cost is no object (provided the total is less than the advance you subsequently receive).

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION

This year I will not be buying myself any new clothes.  This includes footwear, sportswear, underwear and accessories.  I was moved to make this bold resolve when I counted my winter boots.  I had 9 pairs.  That's 9 pairs of black winter boots.  I have a tan pair and two brown pairs as well.  And yet this didn't prevent me from feeling quite sincerely that I needed another pair of black winter boots.

I blame my mother here.  When I was growing up all the other girls in my class (a phrase children believe in devoutly but parents dismiss as myth) got knee-length zip-up leather boots to wear in the winter, while I had to make do with my Clark's lace-ups.  And just for the record, I did not thank her when I was 40 and still had nice feet, because by the time I was 40 my right big toe joint was already shot.  I blame my father here.  I inherited my hallux rigidus from him.  It's nothing to do with wearing silly high-heeled shoes.  (Unless he has a secret we know nothing about.)

Anyway.  Hence my love of black leather boots.  You may have other reasons for loving them.  But honestly--9 pairs?  Surely there comes a time to say Enough!  Stop the black leather boot madness!  We are not arming to take over the world.  We are not even forming a can-can troupe.  And then I thought, why not stop the entire wardrobe madness thing?  Or put it on hold, anyway.  After all, I do not have a personal duty to shop Britain out of recession.

 I have imposed short-term clothes-buying amnesties on myself before, but a whole year is a new challenge.  Will I end up looking like a bag lady?  Am I, indeed, starting out looking like a bag lady?  To be honest, I've got LOADS of clothes.  I see this afresh every time I have a hormone-driven clothing crisis which involves trying on about 200 things then bursting into tears because I have nothing to wear.  Here, in no particular order, are the sartorial problems I anticipate may crop up in the next 12 months:

• boredom
• important function requiring new outfit
• massive weight gain
• house fire
• pervert stealing all my underwear off washing line
• wardrobe malfunction while away from home
• no tights left intact

Oddly enough, I don't anticipate yielding to temptation and buying some irresistible garment.  It's always far easier to do total abstinence than moderation, I find.  Spending less on clothes is harder than spending nothing.  This way I only have to make one big decision, i.e. my Resolution.  Henceforth I will not be plagued by micro-decisions about lemon yellow capri pants.

How much money will I save, and what am I going to do with it?  I have yet to decide.  I suspect the answer will be to give to charity.  Fair dinkum: 95% of my clothes come from charity shops anyway.  I'd hate to think good causes were suffering because of my resolution.

So, here's what I wore today: skinny jeans (charity shop), black boots (black boot swap with older sister on Boxing Day), pale aqua cashmere polo neck (designer, but I've forgotten which because the label was annoying me so I cut it out.  Charity shop, anyway), black leather biker jacket (I'm just going to type CS for charity shop from now on: CS) and a pale aqua pashmina (CS).  Oh yes, and a chunky silver necklace to break up the vast expanse of polo-necked frontage.  And the killer question: Does this outfit make me look fat? Answer: No, that was all the festive food and drink.

WEEK 24-26 Faffing About

OK.  Faffing about is not a new thing.  Basically, we have now reached the second half of the year, so I am catching up with myself and starting again with a clean slate. This is week 26 of 52, according to the useful website I checked on.  Useful particularly to visitors from other planets a different distance from the sun, and who might not know we operate on a 52 week year.

I the last few weeks I have not been dead, by the way, in case that is the conclusion you leapt to.  My older son thought this when he was 4 and I was late picking him up from school.  There he stood in his little duffle coat, lip trembling, with the teacher saying. 'I'm sure mammy's just on her way!'  (this was Tyneside).  When I finally came panting across the playground he whispered, 'I thought you were dead, mummy.'  The only possible explanation!  She is so reliable, what else could account for it?  That she forgot?

I've been busy, that's all.  Picking the same son up from Durham, as it happens, which for me is an overnight trip, because I need a lie down after driving all the way up the A1(M).  Or the M1, if I'm not concentrating at the crucial junction.  Then we've had visitors from Australia, which meant a sudden burst of housework.  I didn't clean the shower, because they're short-sighted--useful tip there for any lazy slobs.  And I've been writing a novel.  More on that later.

However, I have done a new thing this week, which was to recycle some clothes at the supermarket recycling point.  Normally I stagger into a charity shop with them, saying 'Here, have them all back!'  The problem with this is the thought that the staff will know what kind of crap you have tried to fob them off with, and next time you go in they'll nudge one another and say, 'There she is!  The one that donated a pair of knackered Clarke's school lace ups, and clerical shirt with the sleeves falling off!'

Instead, you stick the bagged up clothes anonymously in the maw of the big skip, raise the handle, hear them thud into the depths, then walk away.  Don't know why I've never done it before.  I've recycled glass and paper, but not clothes.  At Morrisons in Lichfield there is a choice between Marie Curie and Sally Army.  I chose the Sally Army, but in a spirit of fairness I'll donate to the other one next time.  I feel good about this.  Until now the only thought I can recall having about these donation points was to wonder if you could dispose of a dismembered body in them.