The Tale of The Trousers

It would be good to have a new pair of trousers. Marks and Spencer usually provide me with mine. This is what happened.

I go to M&S in Guildford (via a bus, I don't want to drive and the trains are cancelled) and find a pair which fit. I get them home and realise they are polyester and within a year will be as shiny as the plastic bags they spiritually are.

I return to the store. I'm on my way to see a friend and am in an awful hurry as I am trying to fit too much in. I find a pair of wool trousers in the right size and, at the till, hand over the polyester ones and pay the difference. 

Later, at home, I find that what I haven't noticed is that the new trousers are 'slim fit'. This means they are designed for the kind of young fellow who wants their legwear to look as close as it can to a pair of skinny jeans. If you wear them at my age you look like John Cooper Clarke or, worse now I think of it, Max Wall.

I return to M&S a second time. They don't have a pair of black, wool-rich, regular-fit trousers in the store in my size. I go to the Orders desk who tell me to go to the Sales desk. At the Sales Desk the child who serves me says they don't do black, wool-rich, regular-fit trousers at all, but they might have something called Tailored Fit. I don't know what that is, so I go to try and find a pair. There are none, but finding and trying on a pair of offensive blue checked trousers I discover that Tailored Fit is marginally less ludicrous than Slim Fit (there is also Skinny Fit which defies belief) so I return to the desk.

There is a long, snaky queue. I don't want to have to explain all this again, and so wait for the child I've spoken to before to be free. I wave a succession of customers past me, and one middle-aged lady simply stands in front of me and goes to speak to the child herself. Finally I can gain access.

'Tailored Fit seems OK, but you don't have any in this style,' I explain. 'Can you order a pair?' 

The child checks on her phone (I do hope it belongs to the store). 'You won't believe this, but they're out of stock.'

'Oh yes', I reply. 'I not only believe it, I was waiting for you to say it.'

Somehow my receipt had disappeared, and the best I could get was a credit voucher to the sum I'd spent on the unwanted trousers. I returned home, via the train, with nothing more to show for my efforts than a small bit of shiny paper which had cost me £54.