Fleeced

In 2008 I bought myself a grey coloured sleeveless fleece that I liked very much.

I am not sure if I could explain sensibly why I like it so much. It is a basic zip up affair with pockets and a collar, and it fits splendidly with no irritating bits and I can wear it over the top of absolutely anything and feel comfortable.

I wear it to work almost every night.

I have worn it to work almost every night since 2008.

In consequence it is beginning to look a bit shabby. Actually it looks rather a lot shabby, and one of the pockets has got an irritating hole in it from having my car keys poked into it approximately 2,520 times.

The thing is that I still like it. I still like it a lot.

I have tried once or twice to replace it, but have never found anything that comes even close to its comfortable loveliness, and the various jackets I have bought as putative substitutes have quickly been abandoned in favour of the old faithful-but-shabby much worn original.

Regular readers will know that occasionally I make half hearted but usually not terribly successful attempts to upgrade my appearance. I am having one at the moment and have bought four new T-shirts on Amazon, some jeans in Marks & Spencer, and made some new skirts, one of which I have got to take apart again because it is too big.

Therefore I thought that it was time to try and find a replacement fleece ready for the moment when I am going somewhere where I will not get covered in mud or sand or oil or flour or poo, and can wear smart clothes with impunity.

The thing to do, obviously, was to try and find an identical one, made by the same people who presumably still had the same specifications and would be able to send me a less traumatised but nevertheless identical twin.

I didn’t know who they were.

One of my more Asperger’s Syndrome habits is to cut all labels out of all garments because having them rubbing against my skin, anywhere, however minutely, drives me crackers.

Hence none of my clothes contain any relevant information whatsoever, not size, nor handy laundry hints, nor, as would have been very useful in this case, the identity of the manufacturer.

I bought it when I was having a brief managerial phase of insisting all our staff wore grey and blue uniforms, although reserved the managerial right to wear a polo shirt instead of a blouse and scarf, and disguised my subsequent lack of elegance with the fleece.

I bought it from the uniform shop, and it said WINDERMERE TAXIS in embroidered letters on the front.

We sold Windermere Taxis several years ago, and so this bit of detail was no longer necessary. Somehow it didn’t seem quite right to ring the uniform shop and ask them if they would get me a non-uniform fleece, so in an inspired moment I looked on their website for it and found the name of the manufacturer.

After that it should have been a breeze. All I need to do was look on Amazon for sleeveless fleeces produced by that manufacturer and order one.

I found them easily and ordered one. As it turned out they did several colours, so I ordered three, in a Large size, which I thought should pretty much solve my problem for the rest of my life.

They turned up this week and were thick and soft and beautiful, and too small.

Not too small in a not fitting sort of way, just too small in the sense of being smaller and closer fitting than my old one, and too small in the sense that I would not be able to put a couple of jerseys underneath on winter days.

Of course I didn’t know the original size because I didn’t have a label bearing that sort of informative detail to hand.

I sent them back and ordered some which were called XXL, and were the biggest size they had.

They arrived last week and were still too small.

I was puzzled about this, and went back to the drawing board.

After a day or two Mark suggested that perhaps I had originally bought a men’s fleece, and the new ones were for ladies.

This was an absolutely inspired suggestion, so I sent them back and ordered the biggest men’s size.

They arrived this morning and were massive. I would have been able to wear a couple of jumpers, an overcoat and a life jacket underneath them.

We repackaged them sadly and I have reordered some new ones in a Men’s Large size.

I would very much like to wear my four new T-shirts and look tidy. If I wear a lovely new T-shirt and then put a worn old fleece on the top then there is no point in the T-shirt and I might just as well carry on wearing my old one with Donald Duck on the front and the holes in it where Mark wore it once and did some welding.

It has cost me so much in return postage that I could have bought lots of fleeces if only I had been better organised in the first place.

I am actually very excited about the new ones, because I think there is a good chance that these will fit properly.

They will be here in another couple of weeks. I will have to be scruffy until then.

But then I will feel lovely.