My New Jacket

This is a tale of the bad things that happen to me when I have spare time at the weekend. Bear with me, it may go on a bit.

On Saturday morning I set out on a mission. The objective: to get a new jacket; the reason: my current winter wear consisted mainly of a bright red waterproof cagoule which, although minimising my involvement in traffic accidents, was rather past its best on the waterproofing front and frankly, smelt considerably like a wet dog. We join the story on the return leg of my journey after several potential sources of jacket have failed to deliver.

As I fought my way through the swelling pre-Christmas crowds I’ll admit I was becoming a little disheartened. I’d been wandering about various retailers for over an hour now with no joy. Tisso: too expensive, TKmax: just rubbish, Millets: didn’t let me in as I wasn’t really their type of person, hardy har. But then, with failure weighing heavily on my shoulders and a mere 5 minutes from home, I remembered an outdoor centre named, imaginatively enough, “Outdoor World” not 2 minutes form where I was. I set course for this fresh opportunity with renewed vigour.

Initially my browsing in the centre also came to nothing; all that was left to do was wander home, both cold and wet. Then suddenly, out of the corner of my eye I spied a rack of jackets I had failed to notice before. ‘My my, I thought, those look rather dapper’. Moving closer only confirmed my suspicions, and at a bargain price too!

I went ahead and tried one on, and indeed, its dapperness did transfer itself well to my frame, and you know, I’d never felt a fit quite like it before. Awash with a giddy excitement, I took off the jacket and gave it to the helpful salesgirl who was offering smiled assistance. She dealt with the sale at the till and we made jovial banter as it was processed, my rapier wit on the subject of the weather amusing her immensely. Sale complete, I headed home with my new jacket.

However, upon arriving home and having a further try on of the jacket (as you do), I came to realise that it might be just a tad short for sleeve length, which I hadn’t noticed before. ‘No biggie’, I thought to myself, ‘I’ll run back across and change it for a size up this afternoon’.

So after lunch, jacket and receipt in hand I returned to the store. The same girl was there and came to my aid immediately, taking the too small version away and returning shortly with a larger one.

I tried this on there and then to ensure it was the correct size and indeed it was a perfect fit. I even commented to the salesgirl “No danger of getting cold hands with this one!” to which she laughed heartily (‘gosh’, I think, very pleased with myself, ‘I’m totally getting the hang of this being charming and flirtatious thing, maybe I should come back another time and ask for her phone number?’). I left the shop nodding happily to the other smiling salespeople who watched me leave.

Returning home I inspected my purchase once more. It was the type of jacket that has a removable fleece zipped into it for extra warmth, so I removed this from the main body of the jacket to check how it looked.

It looked fine.

However, when I attempted to return the fleece to its parent jacket I discovered that I couldn’t get it to zip back up. A moment’s inspection revealed the problem; a seemingly misshapen part of the mechanism was preventing the sides of the zip from linking together properly. Having 7 year’s worth of university level engineering training under my belt, I thought, ‘I can fix this’. So after some 20 minutes of filing and shaping, I found I had a working, if somewhat stiff, zip mechanism. It was at this point that I noticed that the zip on the other side didn’t look the same as the one I’d been working on.

With a sinking heart and no little force I undid my “repaired” zip only to find a second set of teeth underneath the first, the set that should have been used to attach the fleece. “Damn it!” I exclaimed, “This is so like something I would do”. Now the main zip was so mutilated that it would no longer zip up, and it jammed permanently a quarter of the way from the bottom.

At this point my eyes wandered over to the label on the inside of the jacket. “Emily/Size 14” it read. ‘What the deuce?’ I thought.

“Emily/Size 14”. Next line- “Woman’s Outdoor Equipment”. Oh no. Check receipts and other labels. Oh no no. I’d gone and bought a girl’s jacket, in the process trying it on in front of sales staff not once, but twice (I can only imagine the hilarity my mistake must have caused them), and to top it all off, I’d mutilated it to the extent that I can’t return it. Bad times.