Yesterday, I bought a velvet jacket.
I think I had been secretly promising myself one for years, but I've been exploring my inner crevices recently, and not in a good way.
In the past, I've shopped for one with a friend, whom we mutually cast as Marvo the Magician in a sketch that we co-wrote.....(voice goes slightly croaky, and mimics holding a walking stick) "some years ago now".
And if you forgive me, I have a bit of a soft spot for velvet.
Plush, you see.
It's an Edwardian curtain, a Sherlockian smoking jacket, a Pastor's cushion. Who doesn't like velvet? I'm cheap, so I'd settle for velveteen but it's all the same to me.
But give me a choice of material and it will be one of two – velvet or chenille.
I know what you're thinking. They're the only two materials you know. And you'd be right. I have read about cotton on washing instructions. It looks complicated.
Apparently you're supposed to separate colours – what the f..... who knew?
And just to show what a modern fairy I am, today I "steamed" my velvet jacket. And this… in a man who's never made his own dumplings. Crazy.
Of course, yesterday I bought a velvet jacket. I know. I'm repeating myself. But this time the emphasis was on the "I". (So it's your fault).
I bought it second-hand (now known as vintage, nice one fellas!) from an Internet site that has 15,000 items for sale.
Now, sit back readers because it so happens that this worldwide enterprise is located within a 7 minute drive of me, let's call it 3 miles between friends.
So I suggested to them that I would "pick up" as I am no stranger to subverting civilisation. I even drove down to the store to tell them so....I mean, look into the possibility.
"It's impossible", the pleasant beardy informed.
Impossible!
"We couldn't possibly do that with so many items. We separate what to put in the shop but the majority of stuff is online".
He was a very nice chap. You know - bearded in a disturbingly blonde way but well spoken, bohemian and we were, it has to be said, mutually cold (not to each other – it's just that it was effing freezing in that hangar - but then they have a lot of items you know - bastards). It was only when I saw he had no velvet, I smelled weakness.
I drove home.
That same afternoon I bought one of their items online - a velvet jacket, navy... with a tale or two to tell. I asked them to deliver it to their own shop and following the playfully calm deployment of one or two mildly sophisticated gambits, they agreed. They even offered a reimbursement of the postage. That was unnecessary, I said, feeling magnanimous. The speed of transaction was "worth it" to me. In reality I didn't want to compromise their training and also I didn't want anybody out-of-pocket if it didn't fit me and therefore I had to return it (or in this case, my derived scenario, not remove it from the building in the first place).
After all, I was buying a jacket on the Internet. What sort of a half wit does that? (Hello, have we met?)
I popped down to collect it a few hours later, hoping (I must confess) to train them about the modern nefarious joys of "in-store pickup" - saviour of the High Street. I walked straight to the counter (I'd been there before, remember? Just a few hours before, but certainly before).
And I was (pretty much) well..... greeted!! (15,000 items and you greet me. What's happening here... a sense of community?)
OK, not so much greeted, perhaps, as expected. (Possibly even tolerated. I'd even settle for humoured).
The order was hot, fresh, you see.
Like me.
And of course nobody had tried to reorganise their business for them before. It was a new thing. I'd clearly been the subject of, or barely (not really) party to (clears throat) ...discussion. A discussion which involved flexible bohemian minds. Now, sit down because I'm including mine amongst them - if buying a second-hand velvet jacket doesn't count me as bohemian, then frankly, my dear, insert gesture here. The rather lovely thing is that it was a game in which every party chose to participate and which ended in solution in which everybody won.
"Have you come for the jacket?" Err, yes, I hesitated and checked in case there was someone standing behind me, wondering if there were talking to me (while also knowing I had come for a jacket, err.... the jacket.).
Don't get me wrong. I know we are a being watched and that there is a big spaceship behind the moon waiting for its moment, but they didn't know me. No way, man.
I gave myself an opportunity to try on the jacket (this was my master plan!). And it fitted like a g... well, like a jacket.
I steamed it today.
I did good.
And I'm expecting to hear of their revised in-store policy pretty darn soon.
Impossible?
I'm Mr Impossible.
I think I had been secretly promising myself one for years, but I've been exploring my inner crevices recently, and not in a good way.
In the past, I've shopped for one with a friend, whom we mutually cast as Marvo the Magician in a sketch that we co-wrote.....(voice goes slightly croaky, and mimics holding a walking stick) "some years ago now".
And if you forgive me, I have a bit of a soft spot for velvet.
Plush, you see.
It's an Edwardian curtain, a Sherlockian smoking jacket, a Pastor's cushion. Who doesn't like velvet? I'm cheap, so I'd settle for velveteen but it's all the same to me.
But give me a choice of material and it will be one of two – velvet or chenille.
I know what you're thinking. They're the only two materials you know. And you'd be right. I have read about cotton on washing instructions. It looks complicated.
Apparently you're supposed to separate colours – what the f..... who knew?
And just to show what a modern fairy I am, today I "steamed" my velvet jacket. And this… in a man who's never made his own dumplings. Crazy.
Of course, yesterday I bought a velvet jacket. I know. I'm repeating myself. But this time the emphasis was on the "I". (So it's your fault).
I bought it second-hand (now known as vintage, nice one fellas!) from an Internet site that has 15,000 items for sale.
Now, sit back readers because it so happens that this worldwide enterprise is located within a 7 minute drive of me, let's call it 3 miles between friends.
So I suggested to them that I would "pick up" as I am no stranger to subverting civilisation. I even drove down to the store to tell them so....I mean, look into the possibility.
"It's impossible", the pleasant beardy informed.
Impossible!
"We couldn't possibly do that with so many items. We separate what to put in the shop but the majority of stuff is online".
He was a very nice chap. You know - bearded in a disturbingly blonde way but well spoken, bohemian and we were, it has to be said, mutually cold (not to each other – it's just that it was effing freezing in that hangar - but then they have a lot of items you know - bastards). It was only when I saw he had no velvet, I smelled weakness.
I drove home.
That same afternoon I bought one of their items online - a velvet jacket, navy... with a tale or two to tell. I asked them to deliver it to their own shop and following the playfully calm deployment of one or two mildly sophisticated gambits, they agreed. They even offered a reimbursement of the postage. That was unnecessary, I said, feeling magnanimous. The speed of transaction was "worth it" to me. In reality I didn't want to compromise their training and also I didn't want anybody out-of-pocket if it didn't fit me and therefore I had to return it (or in this case, my derived scenario, not remove it from the building in the first place).
After all, I was buying a jacket on the Internet. What sort of a half wit does that? (Hello, have we met?)
I popped down to collect it a few hours later, hoping (I must confess) to train them about the modern nefarious joys of "in-store pickup" - saviour of the High Street. I walked straight to the counter (I'd been there before, remember? Just a few hours before, but certainly before).
And I was (pretty much) well..... greeted!! (15,000 items and you greet me. What's happening here... a sense of community?)
OK, not so much greeted, perhaps, as expected. (Possibly even tolerated. I'd even settle for humoured).
The order was hot, fresh, you see.
Like me.
And of course nobody had tried to reorganise their business for them before. It was a new thing. I'd clearly been the subject of, or barely (not really) party to (clears throat) ...discussion. A discussion which involved flexible bohemian minds. Now, sit down because I'm including mine amongst them - if buying a second-hand velvet jacket doesn't count me as bohemian, then frankly, my dear, insert gesture here. The rather lovely thing is that it was a game in which every party chose to participate and which ended in solution in which everybody won.
"Have you come for the jacket?" Err, yes, I hesitated and checked in case there was someone standing behind me, wondering if there were talking to me (while also knowing I had come for a jacket, err.... the jacket.).
Don't get me wrong. I know we are a being watched and that there is a big spaceship behind the moon waiting for its moment, but they didn't know me. No way, man.
I gave myself an opportunity to try on the jacket (this was my master plan!). And it fitted like a g... well, like a jacket.
I steamed it today.
I did good.
And I'm expecting to hear of their revised in-store policy pretty darn soon.
Impossible?
I eat impossible for breakfast.
I'm Mr Impossible.
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