Favourite shirts...

I bought a new shirt today, a proper one, one that you wear with a tie and suit, one that you couldn’t easily wear with shorts – although I do sometimes wear proper shirts with shorts.

I’m funny about shirts. I like Oxfords best, broad weaved light blues with button down collars. At one time I had sixteen in all and all sixteen exactly the same, bought as a job lot from a well known store, a brilliant bargain at forty quid. I’ve been wearing them for years and I’m down to about seven now. I’ll miss them when they’re gone.

My oldest shirt is over twenty years old. It’s still in good shape, the pink a bit faded but the cotton still good. It irons well and still fits. I call it my lucky shirt, but not so lucky that it’s still good enough to wear on such an important day.

Then there are the shirts I never should have bought… don’t worry I’ll wear them one day if Gaynor doesn’t throw them away first - as she often does in an undercover operation hoping that I’ll never notice… and who knows perhaps I don’t.

I have a couple of dining-out shirts – in your face in a stylish, Antony Worral-Thompson way… and no, I didn’t nick them, and four white cotton shirts still in the packaging bought for work shortly before the work went away.

How many shirts have I got? Over fifty and less than a hundred - but I stick to my dozen or so favourites; mainly blue, mainly me.

Anyway, my new shirt is a dark grey stripe.

Wish me luck.