Good and Faithful.

What follows is for the eyes of blokes only. Women dare not allow themselves to understand this strange male obsession I am about to describe. For to understand would be to threaten the foundations of the economy devoted to women’s clothing. To be precise, I am not talking about all blokes either, only those of a certain age who have for some decades been out of the hunt for women. Blokes who, even if they were still in the hunt would not stand a chance of pulling a woman, any woman. In other words, blokes who are past it.
I want to talk about my brown, woollen jersey that has, with considerable regret, just been laid to rest. If I sit down and think hard, I can just remember all those years back when it was new. Of course, while its newness was a handicap as far as I was concerned, it impressed the hell out of the woman in my family, which is, I concede, the chief function of men’s clothing. I felt uncomfortable wearing my new jersey. So bright and so, well, new. Spotless. I couldn’t drink a cup of tea for fear of that first drip, that inevitable brown stain I would make worse by surreptitiously rubbing with my finger.
“Where’s your new jersey?” I was asked when I tried to glide around the place invisibly in my old jersey. Women notice these things immediately. Hairs growing out of your nose and ears. Eyebrows that are just beginning to enjoy a wild independence. Shirt collars that could, with understanding, go another day or two at least. But most of all, comfortable old jerseys that have, according to the oppressive discrimination of women, become fugitive overstayers.
So, as men do, I lost the battle and wore the new jersey more and more, and after a year or two when it was suitably stained and baggy with a little hole here and there, and no longer exposed to the searing examination of the beady female gaze, it began to feel comfortable. Years passed until my new jersey, it’s fibres pulled by poking nails, wool bleached by countless suns, aroma brewed to perfection by slaking rains, finally felt as though it had grown on me. Even after it had been dragged off my back to be washed from time to time, it was a joy to put on in the morning.
But sadly, the time came when even I found it difficult to distinguish the holes from the neck. That’s when I had to take a deep breath and say farewell to my good and faithful brown jersey. I gave it a decent burial, of course. But still, only the blokes out there will understand my grief.