Slack Willie Goes Ping!

This week I bought some chinos from M. & S. online. When I put them on I found they had an elasticated waistband. It was called something else, possibly an 'active waistband'. Even so, has it come to this? Am I, even unconsciously, seeking out 'comfortable' clothing? Will I soon start wearing cardigans and sitting in a rocking chair, wearing slippers with woolly pom-poms on them?
And is there really much difference between chinos and what used to be called 'slacks'? Apart from the fact that today's 'adultescent' fifty-somethings would never buy anything called slacks? It's all very worrying. Will the Bowls Club soon be beckoning? Will I soon be going to Tea Dances at the village hall, whirling Mrs Skidmore round in a slow waltz in between the cups of weak Typhoo and the Garibaldi biscuits?
No, no, no!
It's been a warning to me.
Thank you, God!
I'm going to get blond highlights in my hair.
I'm going to buy a Burberry baseball cap.
I'm going to get a tattoo.
I'm going to get my nipples pierced.
I'm going to get a cock ring.
I'm even going to stop wearing pyjamas and sleep in my underpants!
As a final act of defiance, I'm going to remove Marks and Spencer from my Favourites List. There. Done. Deleted!
M. & S., you can stick your elasticated waistbands where the sun doesn't shine.

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Just when you think things can't get any worse...............when I breathed in a few moments ago, one of my lower shirt buttons broke free from its moorings, shot across the room, ricocheted off the wall and is now buried in the spaghetti of cables that connect me to all you lovely people.

It reminded me of those ladies who fire ping-pong balls across the room from their nether regions. Don't know why as I've never seen this done. Don't get many invitations to stag parties. ('nether regions' is horribly coy. I was going to be more explicit but just couldn't go there. Nothing new there, then.)

However, I am confident that the flying button has more to do with the shirt shrinking in the wash (Carlo probably put it in with the tea towels) than any expansion in my waistline, which is still a creditable 30 inches on a good day.

This button-popping thing once happened to me in a pub. The girl I was sitting with got very excited and exclaimed rather too loudly "Ooh, you've got a hairy belly button!" just as the jukebox fell silent.
She then explained that her excitement at seeing the forbidden fruit of my northward-climbing pubic hair was because her boyfriend was completely smooth. This, in turn, got me excited because her boyfriend was 'well fit', as they say. I feared a few more buttons might start popping as he leaned over and breathed huskily in my ear a detailed description of his ranking in the hirsute stakes.
I'd like to relate that this story had a happy ending - perhaps what aficionados of these scenarios call 'MMF'. Or is that a type of hardboard you buy at Homebase? Whatever. We finished our drinks, called at the chippie and went our separate ways. Because life's a bitch.

Photo by Carlo.
Reproduction of this image on fetish websites is expressly forbidden.

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The vicar stopped me in the Post Office today and asked me if Carlo was now helping out at the garage. "No, why?" I said.
"I saw him there yesterday evening. He was climbing out of the inspection pit with that spiky-haired boy. But he should really wear more clothing if he's in contact with oils and lubricants. I'm a martyr to dermatitis myself and Carlo has such lovely soft skin."
"No, no", I heard myself saying, "I sent him there to look for a golfing tee I lost when my car was being serviced."
This was a lie. I don't even play golf and something in the vicar's eyes suggested he knew this.

It's only a short time since Carlo met Swarfega Boy and already I'm brazenly lying to vicars in post offices. Where will it end? There must be more enjoyable ways of going to hell than being towed there very slowly by a teenage grease monkey in a pick-up truck.

Still to come: Carlo's candlelit supper