“What are you wearing?” I asked my beloved the other day. (After referring to him as my partner in a recent column I got a couple of irate emails taking me to task. “What does that even mean? So annoying!” was the gist of them. I am testing out a couple of alternatives to the word partner, bear with me.)
“What are you wearing?” I asked my little chipmunk, who had recently returned from the North wearing an item I hadn’t seen on him before. He’d been spending a bit of quality time with Queenie, his mother, who was widowed a few years ago and lives alone. I suspected she had something to do with the new gear. Queenie’s been having trouble with her eyes, which meant she couldn’t drive as much as usual. Being a good son, my sweetheart cabbage was kindly chauffeuring her around Portadown. Exciting times were had over these couple of days, according to the feedback I’ve received.
They were thinking about a Chinese or an Indian, but then they worried whether they’d manage to get parking down the town. So instead they went home and Queenie heated up a wee bit of beef stew
For example, one night they were driving back from completing an errand and wondering what to have for their tea. It was one of those nights when they just weren’t sure what they fancied. They were thinking about a Chinese or an Indian, but then they worried whether they’d manage to get parking down the town. So instead they went home and Queenie heated up a wee bit of beef stew. Then they wondered would they go down to Mackles for ice cream, but again they felt slightly hamstrung by the potentially tricky issue of parking.
So Queenie went out to the freezer which is located in the garden, in a place they call the office even though it’s actually a shed, and found a tub of ice cream. They had ice cream and jelly for dessert, followed by a nice cup of tea with a Top Hat, which is a chocolate and marshmallow–based sweet treat favoured mostly, at least in my experience, by the Protestant community. Afterwards, mother and son watched Ru Paul’s Drag Race for the first time in their lives, falling asleep in front of the TV and waking up at 1am, disoriented and lightly dusted in dessert debris.
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“What are you wearing?” I asked my squishy pumpkin. Over his jumper he appeared to be sporting a sleeveless navy fleece, an item that for some inexplicable reason appeared to have aged him by at least 15 years.
“It’s a body warmer,” he said.
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It was a Queenie purchase, just as I suspected. She bought it about a year ago for a fiver in a Belfast charity shop and squirrelled it away until triumphantly producing it when my Armagh amour came on his latest visit to his childhood home and mentioned that he was a bit chilly. Over the years Queenie has amassed quite the collection of body warmers, or gilets, as she likes to call them. She has a gilet for every occasion. A dressy one. A casual one. One to wear around the house. One to wear shopping. Another to wear for walks.
I bet you 10 Top Hats she was wearing one the other week when she went for a bit of banter at the Cane & Able Club, which is a local Portadown activity group for people with various degrees of visual impairment.
Now my honey badger is wandering around the house in a long-johns-plus-body-warmer combo, and there is apparently nothing I can do about it, because, as he says himself, ‘My body warmer, my choice’
Let me answer your inevitable queries about the Cane & Able Club. Yes, it actually exists. Yes it IS the best biblically inspired name for a club supporting people with disabilities in the entire world. The Cane & Able Club is run by a lovely visually impaired woman called Margaret Davidson, who, despite being blind, has no time whatsoever for “sitting in a corner saying I can’t do this, I can’t do that”. The Cane & Able Club used to meet in the local leisure centres for swimming and keep fit and chats, but then the leisure centres all closed down and the fancy new leisure centre is, they say, pricier, so now they meet every Tuesday morning in the town hall.
There aren’t as many facilities as in the leisure centre, but they play Boccia, which is a sort of seated game of bowls, and various board games that have been adapted for those with sight issues. Apparently on Monday nights there is also a tandem bike riding club, where a sighted person sits in the front seat and the visually impaired person takes the back seat. As Margaret quite rightly points out, if it were the other way around there’d be a lot of bikes ending up in the Craigavon lakes.
I don’t know if you can tell, but I’m not best pleased about the body-warmer situation. The long johns that arrived out of the blue a few winters ago were bad enough. I don’t have enough evidence to blame Queenie for those, but let’s just say I have my suspicions. Now my honey badger is wandering around the house in a long-johns-plus-body-warmer combo, and there is apparently nothing I can do about it, because, as he says himself, “My body warmer, my choice.” As someone who advocated for abortion rights in this country I can hardly be seen to argue with that.
I have a feeling this is only the beginning of this trend, as heating bills increase and people turn to this inexplicably ageing and irritating item of clothing as a way to keep the heating off for longer. I know there are worse things happening in the world, but the inevitable invasion of the body warmers is a truly appalling vista. It hardly needs to be said that Queenie can’t wait.