Columns from The Weekend West

Ros Thomas 04/07/2015 Ros Thomas 04/07/2015

Suit Yourself

Most of us are occasionally troubled by the prospect of looking passé. Except my husband. Not quite fifty, his latest fashion fancy is dressing like a squire en route to a clay pigeon shoot.

Last week he sauntered in the door after work, tummy first, proudly sporting a new woollen puffer vest.

From the high ground beside my kitchen bench, I watched him bimble down the hallway, shuffling through the day’s mail. His puffer vest was constructed from some variety of battledress serge, gunmetal grey, with the delicate weave of an army blanket. A 360-degree matrix of padded panels hugged his torso like a mattress. He wore his new vest zipped to his throat, emphasising a dewlap of chin. Here, I thought, is a man who likes to be protected from the elements while still remaining camouflaged in the field.

Ros Thomas 29/11/2014 Ros Thomas 29/11/2014

Dressing Down

I thought I’d arrived early, but to my dismay I was unfashionably late. A warehouse frock sale waits for no woman. The hall opened at 9. It was now 20 past and the building was heaving with bargain hunters.

I’m normally a prudent shopper, but my commonsense turns to compulsiveness when my favourite brand is discounted by 70-percent. I paused in the doorway to absorb the arresting sight of a hundred women on a shopping assault. A flock of twenty-somethings swooped past me and descended on a table of $20 jeans like seagulls on fish ‘n chips. I scampered over to join them.

Ros Thomas 20/07/2013 Ros Thomas 20/07/2013

Taking it on the chin

It’s lucky beards don’t hold grudges because I make damning generalisations about their owners. Shifty weak-chinned buggers they are. I like to know where the beard ends and the man begins. Why the wearers of crumb-catchers always stroke their whiskers while thinking about what they’re hiding behind.

I’ve had some bad run-ins with beards. It started in the 70’s with Catweazle, the TV wizard. I watched every episode from behind a bean bag, revelling in being scared witless. I don’t know if it was Catweazle’s ratty goatee, the crazed look in his eyes or that toad he kept in the pocket of his filthy brown cloak, but that warlock did some lasting damage. Beards gave me the heebie-jeebies.

Ros Thomas 25/05/2013 Ros Thomas 25/05/2013

The Naked Truth

My days as a nudist are numbered. Last week, in the mad rush to get my brood to school on time, I streaked past my husband on the way to the laundry to collect some knickers from the drier. Normally I’d have covered up with a towel, but I was feeling frisky, so I thought I’d give him an eyeful and set him up for his day at the office.

He was sitting on a kitchen stool eating Weetbix, absorbed in the newspaper. He glanced up as I sashayed past. I remembered the deportment coach from school telling us that a woman’s derriere is mesmerising to a man. I now get what she was on about – all that roundness and pertness, the curve of the waist giving way to the swell of the hips. So I floated by the kitchen bench on tiptoes knowing this would make my width taller and my cheeks cheekier. With a toss of my head, I shot him a wink over my shoulder.

Ros Thomas 05/01/2013 Ros Thomas 05/01/2013

Mutton dressed as man

My husband is so fashion forward he thinks he’s the new black. Apparently, the new black is a portly but cute middle-aged father of three with Henry Kissinger glasses decked out in an electric yellow Polo shirt and cargo shorts with a hammer holder.

He’s not alone – I know other charismatic men of a certain age who dress smartly at the office, but who throw caution to the wind at weekends and go out in public looking like a one man sailing regatta – all stripes and baggywrinkled Bermudas – convinced they’re the ship’s biscuit.