I was watching a TV programme about 'prog rock' the other night – as you do – alright, as I do, that was one of my adolescent weaknesses – I've still got a shelf full of vinyl albums by The Nice, Emerson Lake & Palmer, King Crimson and Yes – and there was a story about how Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues was once struggling with two songs that had good openings but weak endings. His solution was to combine them and the end result – Question (1971) – proved to be one of the band's most successful singles (No.2 in the UK and No.21 on the Billboard Hot 100). And then I thought: "Hello, I've got a couple of poems – one that starts well but ends weakly – and one that ends well but has a weak opening. Oh, and also a haiku that needs a good home. I wonder if I can pull off the same trick?" So here we go – one recycled haibun...


CARGO PANTS ARE OUT

I’m on the 5:30 from Liverpool Street. Oblivious to any sense of irony or self-awareness, the overweight guy – sitting opposite me in the carriage – orders a Mars Bar and a large bag of cheese ‘n’ onion potato crisps to go with his Diet Coke. As we pull out of Manningtree, he phones ahead to an Indian restaurant in Ipswich to order a takeaway. If we are what we eat, then he’s about to become a Prawn Dansak, with side orders of Bombay Potato, Saag Aloo, Bhindi Bhajee, Pilau rice, two Peshwari naan – and a couple of vegetable Samosas thrown in for good measure.

I am reminded of all this the next day... when I pull on a pair of freshly laundered jeans and find they are a little bit tighter than they were the last time I wore them. I’d like to think they’d shrunk in the wash. I’d like to think a lot of things. I’d like to think I still had the body of a 19-year-old. But I know that, short of kidnapping a 19-year-old, those days are over.

It’s on days like this you wake up and know you’ll never again wear Madrass-check cargo pants, skater boi shorts, snakeskin cowboy boots, biker-style leather jackets, Liberty-print fitted floral shirts, horizontal stripes nor Chuck Taylor Converse All Star sneakers.

It’s a coming of age acceptance that you can no longer pretend those straining button-holes are a deliberate fashion statement. And that you are never going to lose those extra two inches that'll make your clothes fit more comfortably. It’s a coming of age recognition that some colours now make you look more washed out and washed up than you already feel. It’s a coming of age admission that some of those clothes never fitted even when they were brand new and their purchase was always going to be an act of blind faith.

It’s a coming of age thing, I say, as I finally pass over a bundle of little-worn clothes to the lady in the charity shop.

middle age calling...
designer jeans out
stretchy waistbands in