Cold Comfort

My heart leapt like a lamb in spring when I first read it.  There, in earnest black and white, in the style section of The Guardian of all places, so it must be true:

"Tracksuit bottoms are coming out the closet"

I sighed in relief, an action made easier by my elasticated waistband.  At last, fleecy grey marl was in the ascendancy, soon to take up its rightful place beside big knickers and thermal vests in the pantheon of Female Indispensables.  Finally, I thought, fashion has seen sense, comfort has indeed triumphed over style; fashionistas have recognised the error of their ways in creating clothes unwearable by anything other than pert-nippled mannequins or prepubescent girls who have yet to develop taste, nevermind pertness.

Up here in Boudicca Country, we deem it unwise to sashay down the street with one boob hanging out like a sock left forgotten on a wall.  We don't have the weather for a start.

The feminist movement up here, while applauded, is ring-fenced with a chapped-faced practicality.  Burn your bra?  Not bloody likely.  It's one more layer between you and a slow death from hypothermia.  Anything keeping your blood from freezing in your veins gets a big thumbs up in these parts, frostbite permitting. 

Jogging bottoms are as an essential part of northern life as childhood obesity and S.A.D.  Jogging bottoms understand what it's like to live up here — the cold, the mud, the pies — they know all about plunging temperatures and bulging waistlines.  They cater for both cause and effect.

"Does my bum look big in this?"

The fact of the matter is, in tracksuit bottoms everyone's bum takes on the size and scale of a house that has somehow bypassed planning restrictions and now overlooks the neighbours.  They are the greatest egalitarian arse-levellers since dropped waists and jodhpurs.

Already, my mind's eye has me schlumping around Tesco with a spring in my step and a double waistband as high as my armpits.   Whenever I catch an envious gaze (and rest assured, I will), I shall reply with a cocked finger and a cheerfully smug "Yep, that's right — 65% pure polyester, 35% cotton", before breezing on to Cold Meats.

Happy, shiny thoughts come to an abrupt halt.  Reading on, Jess Cartner-Morley informs me that the only joggers counting as 'fashion' are the ones with, gulp, ELASTICATED cuffs.  What kind of wilful, arse-magnifying MADNESS is this?   Only the loose of bowel sport elasticated ankle cuffs, for crying out loud!  That's why you only EVER see them on toddlers and old guys.

Still reeling from the whole snug-at-the-ankle jogging bottoms sucker-punch, Cartner-Morley delivers the crushing death blow:

"...that you can only wear them with heels."

WTF?

With HEELS?!  As in stilettos?!

Supposing just for a moment that I did want to look like a toddler clopping my way down to the corner shop in my mum's shoes to ask for two ounces of sherbert pips, the aforementioned inclemency of Scottish Borders weather would make this outfit viable on precisely three days of the year.  Otherwise I'd either slip on the ice and break my neck, or have to be hauled out of the mud with a rope and a 4x4.  I mean, one look at my marl-swaddled arse and I'd be confused with livestock.

Grrrr, fashion.  Gives with one hand, takes with the other.