Jonny McCambridge: The ordeal of wearing uncomfortable trousers

While accepting this is true, I generally retort that this should not be accepted as evidence of a less than serious mind, nor should it be assumed that there are not issues about which I possess strong convictions.

Such as the importance of wearing comfortable trousers.

If I were to ape some of my more distinguished peers and turn my attention to the state of the polity then I would likely find myself advocating laws which make it compulsory to wear trousers with elasticated waistbands at the office.

Which is a roundabout way of bringing me to my subject for this week - the ordeal of buying new clothes.

I understand that this is a workaday ritual for many, that is not unusual for the style-conscious to exist in a permanent cycle of trying on, purchasing and returning garments. For most I imagine that buying clothes is a process as natural and vital to life as the movement of the tides.

It is not that way with me. Any aesthetic concerns I may once have possessed have long since been dismissed, notions of adhering to fashion diluted like ink in water. My aspirations exist no higher than finding a pair of trousers in which I can achieve a state of relaxation. And when I find them I wear them until....and I apologise for not being able to find a more eloquent turn of phrase here....until the backside falls out of them.

Once a year my wife gamely takes me shopping to buy new clothes for my birthday. I’m generally reluctant and obstructive, perhaps scarred by a previous experience during which the fire alarm went off when I was in the changing room of a department store, prompting a panicked assistant to bang on the door urging me to evacuate the building immediately even though, at that exact moment, I was wearing only my underpants. I politely told her to wait.

And so it is that on a Saturday in late November I find myself strolling past rails of denims, moleskins, chinos and cords. An enthusiastic assistant asks me if I know what I was looking for.

‘Something that I can wear at work, at home and, preferably, when I’m asleep too,’ I joke.

She doesn’t laugh.

My wife approaches, carrying a pair of trousers which she wants me to try on. We move towards the dressing room. I look at the garment. According to the size marked on the label it should fit. I pull on the trousers and quickly notice that something doesn’t seem right. They are tight. Uncomfortably tight.

‘These trousers are the wrong size,’ I shout to my wife. ‘No, they’re just slim fitting,’ she calls back.

Except slim fitting doesn’t begin to cover it. The trousers have been absorbed onto my flesh like a new layer of prosthetic skin. I begin to think about the scene in Grease when Olivia Newton-John appears in the leather suit. I had said earlier that I wanted a pair of trousers that I could wear all the time. But by this it was not my intention to indicate that I wanted trousers which I was physically unable to remove.

My wife wants to see how they look so I struggle out, adopting a strange straight-legged waddle reminiscent of a young Forrest Gump.

She takes one look at me and shakes her head. ‘Good God, no.’

Thankfully I’m in a place beyond the reach of vanity. I go back to the dressing room and begin to remove the trousers. It’s as easy as peeling an orange while wearing oven gloves. Eventually I am separated from the cursed garment and I fling the evil trousers into the darkest corner.

Then I lift another pair. They fit pleasingly around my capacious rump. I sigh with pleasure. They are the trousers I arrived in.

I suggest that it is time to go home. As we’re walking out I notice that there’s a hole in my shoe, but I don’t say anything.