The Postman's Pants

Never lend your husband’s clothing to another man. I did that last month. Leant a pair of gloves to the village postman whose fingers were perishing. It was the least I could do for a man who is my main connection with non-edible consumer goods of every kind. I confess, I am a catalogue queen. Whenever I feel guilty about this I remind myself how much money I am saving in petrol and parking (not to mention how vastly I am shrinking my carbon footprint – practically the size of a geisha’s). Garden supplies, children’s toys, soft furnishings, clothing, gadgets, everything, it seems, that we do not immediately consume (and even a fair bit that we do – Inverawe smoked trout and salmon— fight over the last morsel) can come to me at the click of a mouse.
When the phone rings I suffer from a sudden attack of familial deafness. When the postman or DHL man knocks, I thrill. A parcel. For me? How perfectly lovely. I like signing the little bits of paper they produce. It almost makes me feel as if I have a secretary. Print here sign there. Madam. Vanish flour dusted apron and cords, and yanked back hair; enter alternative me in a neat suit and bob. For that one moment I hold the pen.

And then there is the delicious menu of choices the catalogues afford. The Garden menu – David Austin’s Shropshire Lass or The Countryman on the terrace trellis? Those deep dark tulips from Parkers this year? Or the crimson? Followed by the clothing menu – Boden again – reliable with a light seasoning of playful -- or the slightly more exclusive if less about town Brora? Yummy skirts that make tweed flirt, cashmere to die for. (Or at least give up your monthly membership at the not quite local health club for). And the secret side benefit of shopping by catalogue -- you avoid looking at your thighs in a badly lit (by that I mean unflatteringly – shall I say brutally, lit) dressing room.

Which brings me back to the postman. Gloves were one thing. A simple act of charity. He returned them a few days later, silently, posting them through the letter box so that when I returned from wherever I was they could be run over conveniently by the pushchair, immediately at home again in their rightful chaotic mileu of childmud and floordust. But last week in our brief unseasonable pretence of summer it was shorts. Poor postman on laden bike rings, then in the shuffle of envelopes and packets, drops small parcel onto floor. Instead of getting off the bike, which is heavy and difficult to balance, he leans forward to pick up parcel still astride the bike. Either he has eaten too much curry last night or his shorts (that have not seen the light of day since last year) catch on part of the bike, because there is an audible rip from somewhere near his seat. Am just beginning to be grateful again for onset of familial deafness when I see his hand instinctively check out the seat of his shorts.
“Oh god, torn um haven’t I” he says.
Do I let this denizen of postal provision cycle off home in tatters, his smalls on show to the entire village? Perhaps I should have, but I do not. I glance at his girth, make a quick calculation about the size of my husband’s old cut off cycling shorts (not of the Lycra Rob variety) and invite him in to change.
I thunder up the stairs, have a quick rummage in chest of drawers and descend already wondering if I have done the wrong thing with a capital WR.
“Look, try this pair,” I say sliding my hand round the door of the downstairs loo as if he were my self-conscious ten year-old son in a high street changing room. Half chagrined and half relieved, he re-emerges, hops on his bike and speeds off, absentmindedly leaving his torn shorts behind him (more ten year-old there than I thought).

These same shorts I folded, left ready in the porch where they hung around waiting for the opportune moment. When out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of a red bike go past the window this morning I hurried to the porch, grabbed the shorts and, wanting to catch him this time before he had gone, shouted, not very loudly, but loud enough.
“Here. The shorts. You left them the other day.”
There she was. Old Lady Marlow. All ears and eyes, all techni-colour memory and mouth of her. Right there across the road from me, stick, cardigan and sensible tie-up shoes included. With a cat that got the cream look written on her face. The rotten luck of it.