A Different View
When it comes to dressing, best to let it all hang loose
Is it a father thing to always tuck your shirt inside your trousers?” was the question from one of the teenage sons recently – as though I thought I was Superman and was actually wearing my underpants outside my pants.
The truth is that sometimes it’s just the only way to ensure the public is spared an unsightly glimpse of an ever-expanding waistline – although it can also be seen as yet another indication of the different approach to sartorial style among the generations.
Because you’d sooner find a Poor Clare downing pints in a public house than a teenager with their shirt neatly tucked inside their pants – and that even goes for when they’re wearing their school uniform.
It’s as though the world would spontaneously combust if top and bottom were even to touch off off each other, never mind sticking to the original reason for wearing clothes – keeping the cold out.
So shirts today are invariably worn loosely outside trousers – if indeed shirts are worn at all. And just in case the shirt would accidentally sneak inside the trousers, jeans are worn at half mast to leave seriously branded underpants exposed for all to see.
Back in the day the only reason to worry about the state of your underwear was the chance that medics would have to cut through your outer garments if you were unlucky enough to be hit by a bus. But today your choice of pants is apparently a fashion statement – so elasticated waistbands now carry more branding that Lansdowne Road.
Shoes may have shoelaces but that doesn’t mean you have to acknowledge their existence by actually tying them – and if you did tie them, you must never loosen them again because it’s much more rewarding to spend ten minutes wriggling into them with the laces still closed.
You must also ensure that you never take the weather into account when choosing your clothing for any particular day. Chief crime in this area is wearing a coat in the rain – you must never wear something that serves as practical a purpose as keeping you dry when you’d look much hipper with a tee-shirt and hoodie permeating the water through to your skin.
One area that we oldies have to give ground on, however, is the predilection for dark clothing in summer time. It used to be that we were told to wear white in summer, since white clothing is supposed to keep us cool — but it doesn’t.
In fact, black clothing is the best way to keep cool in the heat. Apparently it’s just basic physics. It is true that white clothing does reflect the sun’s rays back, instead of letting them cook us – but the problem is that heat comes from two directions….because it’s trying to get out of you as well. When all that sweaty, body heat hits the white clothing, it is reflected right back towards the body. So when we wear white, we effectively cook ourselves.
Thus for once the kids and the Goths are right – because black may absorb everything coming in from the sun, but it also absorbs energy from the body instead of reflecting it back.
But winning one battle does not guarantee success in the war – and anyway they really only choose their fashion sense by watching what we do….and then doing exactly the opposite.
Thus we wear shirts tucked into trousers with no sign of underwear – unless you include the odd string vest – and they let it all hang loose. But in our own way, we too once were rebels too because when our fathers wore their neat shirts and ties; remember those three-button bottle green bellbottoms or flared jeans and open-neck shirts that had round bits at either end of the collar?
So each generation to its own it seems – and by and large we should stick to the script. Because there’s nothing worse that some middle-aged bloke who still thinks he’s eighteen and dresses in a way that would only be appropriate if you actually were a teenager.
Think how embarrassed you’d have been if your own father turned up at the school gate to greet you, wearing flared bellbottoms and a Lynyrd Skynyrd tie-dye tee-shirt.
Remember that next time you think it might be cool to let the waistband of your jockeys be seen by the great unwashed.
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
The only time in your life that you should ever utter the words: “Do you know who I am?” are if you’ve just had a bang on the head or you are unfortunately suffering from dementia.
Because, otherwise, the phrase ‘do you know who I am’ only serves to make things a whole lot worse.
Normally, the phrase is unleashed towards late night door staff on a wave of alcohol – and never once in the history of time has it produced the result the utterer had intended.
The doorman may well know who you are which is often the very reason you’re not getting into the place in the first instance – or if he doesn’t know who you are, he won’t be unduly influenced when he does, unless you’re a famous movie star or his long-lost cousin.
‘Do you know where I am?’ might often be closer to the phrase you’re looking for, because that would serve you well when you’re looking for a taxi.
‘Do you know who I am?’ is a threatening phrase that in truth wouldn’t frighten the cat. But if you’re anxious to dig the hole a few shovels deeper, you should follow up with ‘I’d like to speak to your manager.’
Managers can be elusive at the best of times, but they’re normally rarer than hen’s teeth when it comes to the small hours of the morning – and even if they’re there, they are most likely watching proceedings on CCTV…just so they know who you are, in case you yourself can’t remember.
‘I’d like to speak to your manager’ suggests that you and he or she are from the one social sphere which is several strata north of the one occupied by door staff.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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A Different View with Dave O’Connell
As it turned out, we were much closer to a Eurovision win than we could ever have imagined – not Ireland, of course, because we’ve now mastered the art of just sending cannon fodder to be blown out in the semi-final.
No, this was just two of us – myself and our eldest – who were lucky enough to be at Anfield for the Reds’ recent win over Brentford, where positioned in the seat right in front of us were four happy lads from Finland.
One of them, we now know, was Käärijä, the singer of the catchiest song at Eurovision, Cha Cha Cha.
But just a week before 7,000 people sung his catchphrase at the Eurovision Arena, he and two his mates – accompanied by an older bloke who had to be either his dad or from the national broadcaster – sat anonymously in the same corner of the lower level of Anfield’s Main Stand.
He was utterly unknown to us as well of course, and the only thing that saw him stand out was his green nail varnish. Live and let live, of course, but it still ensures that you make an impression even if it looks like you were just very late for St Patrick’s Day.
Käärijä may well be Liverpool’s greatest Scandinavian fan, although the bar for that is set fairly high, given that they invade the city in greater numbers every two weeks than the Vikings did just once during the first millennium.
Equally, he may not be a football fan at all – although, as the rest of the week proved, he sure loves a crowd.
Positioned as we were in the corner of the Main Stand, the next section to us, around the corner in the Anfield Road Stand – currently adding a top layer – was occupied by the visiting Brentford supporters.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
Contactless payments reached a record €17.9 billion in Ireland last year – up by 31 per cent on 2021, as people came out from under their Covid shell and appear to have left their cash behind them.
Figures from the Banking & Payments Federation found that – despite the cost-of-living increases – the Irish public made three million contactless payments a day, worth an average of €53 million in the final quarter of 2022.
Given that there are 3.8 million people in Ireland over the age of 18, that means that almost every single one of us tapped the card every day last year.
And again, on the presumption that there are a few who still prefer peeling a fifty off a wad of notes, the true figure may be even higher, as we eschew actual money every time we go into a restaurant, bar or shop.
Then comes the monthly morning of reckoning when you open your statement – electronic of course because, like paper money, banks don’t deal in paper statements anymore either – and your guilty secrets unfurl like a rap sheet before your very eyes.
Five taps of a Friday night in the local, followed by a five-ounce burger meal on the way home.
And just why did you need a family-pack of crisps when a small bag would have done? Was all that beer and wine really for a party, or a night in just for one?
Cash provided plenty of dark corners to ignore your profligacy, but there are no hiding places in the contactless world.
Worse still, until that morning of reckoning arrives, you’ve no clue how much you’ve spent, and handing over the card doesn’t hurt half as much as parting with hard cash.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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