Through the Wardrobe, Darkly

Dear Chroniclers,

there's a new spring to my step, for mrs electrofried has been rifling through my drawers!

It's that time of year, you see.

Open the Doors

Holiday beckons, and the moths were let loose just the other day when I instructed Fetlock the Butler to prise open the secondary electrofried wardrobe in search of summer outfits. The love of my life was first to venture in ...

"It's a all a bit dark in here, dear.",

was her pithy observation as a shower of assorted black clothing was propelled forcefully through the jemmied doors of the cupboard into the waiting arms of Fetlock.

"Oh please, please - not the black spats!,

I protested feebly.

"I'm sorry darling, they have to go ... all of them. It's like being married to an undertaker."

I knew the game was up.

Ballooning

It happened the day I hit forty, an age that now seems little more than the first daffodiled flush of Spring. It was as if the rip-cord of youth had been yanked mercilessly from life's inflatable body-jacket. My waist-line expanded ... explosively.

I found myself scanning the pages of the "Little Wittering Bugle" in search of classified adverts for male corsetry and news of local Sumo-wrestling classes. An unhealthy combination at the best of times.

And then someone made a passing remark that black was a very slimming colour ...

Funeral Days

Black was the colour, black was the name. Past forty, my new found corporeal bulk took refuge behind a veritable big, black cloud of darkness.

Eschewing only the pallid white-foundation and lumpen mascara so beloved of their kind, I could have been frog-marched into a meeting of Visi-Goths and passed off as Uncle Lard, the mentally defective relative long-imprisoned in the dungeons beneath the West Wing of the House of electrofried.

Before I knew it, I was drawn inexorably toward the "C" section in Little Wittering's very own dodgy DVDs'n'cheapo-music emporium in search of albums by Cash, Johnny (AKA The Man in Black) and The Cure (glumness a speciality).

The funereal shrouds were indeed closing in. Rather than the rejuvenated and slimmed-down electrofried I had sought to emulate, I now looked more like some vast and fatted Victorian wake, complete with its own built-in pie-counter. Not a pretty sight.

March of the Shopping Trolley

And so dear Chroniclers, it was time once more to be taken in hand by mrs electrofried.

Pausing only to deliver instructions to Fetlock for the removal of the remaining black garmentry and its immediate distribution to the needy of Little Wittering, she bundled me into the back of the charabanc and sped off toward a discrete clothing dispensary for the chronically confused just a few miles from the electrofried estate.

There was to be no escape. My person was subjected to an hour's worth of fashionista intrusion as mrs electrofried enlisted the services of a deeply bored Saturday Girl to help pluck items at random from the rails of the dispensary. Resisting the temptation to enquire whether my nether regions looked big in them, I paraded a seemingly endless succession of outfits the length of the store under the watchful eye of mrs electrofried. Saturday Girl, meanwhile, chewed gum.

At length the ordeal was over and serried ranks of in-store man-servantry packed the charabanc with what appeared to be the entire summer-stock of an average sized M&S discount outlet.

Clothes that Maketh the Man

So here I sit in my bath-chair before the Remington Noiseless, resplendent in my new finery. The "vetements noirs et grands" have been banished, replaced with tasteful linen shirts in cream, brown and gold. My feet are shod not in black buckled boots but eazee-fit loafers.

And do you know what, mrs electrofried was right yet again. It feels good - it makes me smile. And with that smile and just a little determination, the world around can be changed!

Don't tell mrs electrofried, though will you ... but I've got the black spats on underneath. Trusty Fetlock smuggled them to me earlier this morning!

best regards

electrofried (mr)