by Roger McEwan
‘Does that top really go with those shorts?’
‘Do you think those trousers are a bit short for you now?’
‘Are jandals appropriate when there’s a frost?’
The children’s answer to these questions is normally a clipped ‘Yes’ and I have invariably gone with the flow, though Liv’s love of jandals almost forced my hand. Jandals (it’s slang for ‘Japanese sandals’) is the New Zealand equivalent of thongs in Australia, slops in South Africa and flip-flops in the UK. Liv briefly acquired the nickname ‘Jandals’ at school because she wore them exclusively for a year, without major illness I hasten to add. Fortunately we don’t live in Australia – ‘Thongs’ would be an embarrassing nickname.
Does this mean Rog and Liv have developed a sharp fashion sense? Well, yes and no and – as they will read this one day – I won’t say who’s the yes and who’s the no. One of them was observed recently, ready to go out to dinner, with their pants on back to front. That example, while hilarious, is unrepresentative and normally they’re pretty sharp. In fact I’ve noticed as they’ve approached their teen years that they’ve become more conscious of their appearance and upped their game accordingly. If they’ve made a considerable effort I politely inquire about a boyfriend or girlfriend and get attacked for my curiosity.
The arrival of a school uniform made school mornings easier for Rog as it eliminated choice. It wasn’t a massive change for him as, like many boys, he expended little time on such decisions. Liv, on the other hand, dreaded the arrival of a school uniform as she was forced to wear a skirt. Before this, the last time I remembered Liv in anything resembling a skirt was for a family event when she was four. She had looked cute in her white one-piece party dress, though she hadn’t been overly impressed. I have a charming family photo with Rose, Rog and I beaming at the camera – but all we can see of Liv is her back. The introduction of shoes also caused Liv distress. The choice was Roman sandals or solid, sensible black shoes. No jandals.
SKIN IN THE GAME
Buying clothes for children is a task I don’t relish. Rose, thankfully, is excellent at this though I sense her motivation is partly a fear of what I may choose. It’s a legitimate fear but it works for me. The times I have been involved in buying clothes for the children I embark on hit-and-run raids. The children and I identify what we’re buying, plan an attack picking out the stores in question, and we’re in and out in record time. This approach can come unstuck. I once found myself at home with two left shoes, but who checks for that?
Rog loves my hit-and-run approach to shopping. There may be something in the male psyche that makes the thought of shopping expeditions abhorrent. In Rog’s case it may be due to being subjected to shopping trips with Rose, Liv and various aunties, cousins and nieces. I empathise. I’ve stood – or sat when the shop is insightful enough to realise that keeping the male partner happy has a direct correlation with sales – with nothing to do except wander the store trying not to be observed hanging around the lingerie section. Come to think of it, I’ve never been taken on a lingerie shopping expedition. That’s like shopping for meat and veges and ignoring the desserts isle. Moving on.
I’m not sure why males are wanted on clothes shopping trips. The answer to the inevitable question ‘Does this look good on me?’ is yes. That’s after a suitable pause to give the impression I’m giving the question my full consideration. This is because I’m ready to leave. It makes no difference how long we’ve been there, I’m ready to leave and I’m sure I’m not alone. It’s accepted wisdom that a male’s opinion on clothes isn’t highly valued so why bother to ask? I’ve come to the conclusion it’s a test. It has to do with commitment and being a priority over whatever else we want to be doing, such as watching sport. Technology has come to our rescue via smartphones and now I can play Angry Birds or watch sport while I patiently wait.
Although I can’t offer advice on selecting clothes, I can pass on a tip that works brilliantly with the children when you’re buying clothes. Liv, ten at the time, was the first casualty of this approach when she needed new swimming togs after leaving hers in the changing rooms.
In my hit-and-run style, we attacked the local Rebel Sports store. I found the same brand and style as the togs she’d lost and, even better, they were half price at $25. It looked like my lucky day.
‘Here you go, Liv,’ I said as I handed them to her. ‘Go and make sure they fit.’
‘Okay,’ she said, taking them but she made no move towards the changing rooms. Instead she carried on browsing through the rack of togs. This wasn’t part of the plan but I waited patiently. My gaze intensified when she casually selected another pair of togs.
‘These look cool,’ she said and skipped off to the changing rooms.
I checked the price on a similar pair – $50. Hmmm.
It wasn’t long, although it feels long when you’re loitering around changing rooms, before Liv was back.
‘Do they fit?’ I asked
‘Yep they both fit.’
‘Both?’
‘Please Daddy, can I have these ones?’ she implored, holding up the expensive togs.
Girls have an innate ability to wrap their dads around their little finger. Unfortunately for Liv my days of guilt, when she and Rog could have anything as long as they were happy, were well behind me.
‘What’s wrong with these ones?’ I asked, holding up the replacement togs. ‘They’re exactly what you had and they’re half the price.’
‘They’re okay. But these are way cool. Pleeeease, Daddy.’
I paused. Normally I’d roll over in a situation like this as the money in question wasn’t huge. But in a moment of inspiration I had an idea.
Holding up my preferred option I said, ‘Here’s the deal. You want the cool ones but these are fine and half the price, so I’ll give you a choice. I’ll happily pay for these ones but if you want the cool ones I’ll pay the first $25, which is what I would be paying anyway, and the rest can come from your savings.’ Liv had built an impressive bank balance from saving her chore money.
‘What?’ said Liv, looking astonished. Normally she was confronted with a simple choice and she either got what she wanted or she didn’t. Thankfully she doesn’t get moody when she doesn’t get her way. Not yet anyway. But here she was faced with a third option and it involved unlocking some of her financial stockpile.
‘You don’t need the cool togs,’ I explained, ‘but if you really want them then you have to spend some of your own money. It’s that simple.’
Rog, who’d been loitering without intent, ambled over suddenly interested in events. Although I’m sure he was enjoying his sister’s predicament as only a sibling can, he knew that this would apply to him at some stage and it was in his best interests to understand the rules.
Liv silently weighed up her options. I didn’t know which way she would go but, to her credit, she chose the cool togs. It was a win-win-win. Liv got the togs she wanted, I spent what I considered reasonable. The other major win, which didn’t occur to me at the time, was that with her own money in the purchase, I didn’t think that she’d lose them this time. And she didn’t. She wore them until they started giving her a decent wedgie, not a good look!
It was a stroke of genius. I then went one step further to consolidate my gains. To thwart the children from just asking Rose to buy what they wanted, meaning I’d pay half as that is how we settle costs relating to the children, I told Rose the story. She thought it was a great idea. Sorry guys but that’s checkmate.
Rose and I have both used this approach in a range of situations and it has worked a treat. When Rog started high school I bought him a house key in case he got home before me or in the event of an emergency. Knowing Rog, as a boy, would lose it immediately I made him a deal: if he loses the key he has to pay for the replacement and the lost key. So it’s free as long as he doesn’t lose it. (He hasn’t.)
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As for Liv, she went halves on a pair of tennis-ball-green shoes that she wanted but didn’t need. Those are the first shoes I’ve ever seen her clean, although she did use Grandma’s face cloth for the task. Progress of sorts.
STAYING HIP
Buying clothes for myself I also find a struggle. It isn’t the task itself, which is pretty straightforward, it’s the selection of clothes without experiencing buyer’s remorse. To mitigate this I’ve found that a woman’s opinion is invaluable and has saved me from wasting money on dubious clothes I’m unlikely to wear. Rose and Cathy were both blessed with brutal honesty, which is what is needed. Feedback such as ‘Those trousers make you look like you’re advertising your private parts’ makes decision making easy. After all, they had a vested interest in making sure I looked presentable if not gorgeous because they had to stand next to me.
Being single, without that critical feminine eye, has meant my clothes buying has become infrequent, allowing me to slide towards owning only one respectable shirt.
There are other signs that tell me that it’s time to invest in new clothes. It’s when I feel each undulation in the footpath through the wafer-thin soles of my shoes. My jeans lose that jeans feel and although they’re still wearable, it’s obvious they should be retired. Favourite shirts deserve a commendation for the service able to be wrung from them. I have even resorted to using sticky tape to repair the cuffs of my real favourites. On the inside that is, and out of sight. It keeps them looking respectable from a distance and I figure if anyone is close enough to see the inside of my cuffs then the tape has done its job.
Replacing items such as jeans is relatively straightforward. Unless I’ve put on weight, or height, I just buy the same style, that’s a pair of 503s with a 33 waist and 34 leg. I try them on but it’s a precaution and not a fashion check. Shoes, UK size 10, socks and underwear are also easy to replace and hard to get wrong and I love the feel of new cushion-soled gym socks. They’re one item of clothing that I buy with a genuine sense of delight.
When Cathy and I were together I usually took the opportunity to employ her feminine eye and buy clothes when I was visiting her in England. There the range of clothes is massive compared to Palmerston North. There are malls so large that they have more than one of the same store! I took the children to one called Bluewater and kept a watchful eye on them – if I lost them, they could end up in another district.
Cathy also sent clothes over when she found items that she thought would suit me. She was almost never wrong, though the metrosexual pink shirt has still to make its debut. It does feel good to say ‘It’s a Ted Baker from London’, although I’m sure that type of comment creates mixed impressions ranging from ‘tosser’ to ‘big tosser’.
While writing this chapter I decided to check out the status of the children’s and my wardrobes and drawers. I found that the children are carting clothes between houses that they will never wear. Some clearly haven’t fitted them in years.
I also discovered that I have clothes that have been on hangers so long that the shoulders are permanently hanger-shaped. In fact of the roughly fifty items in my wardrobe I cycle through only about ten of them. I didn’t, however, have a cleanout as I probably should have. Part of me is confident that some of my older clothes will be trendy again. One day even flares will be back.
Overall I think I need to be more up to date. I’m okay, but the slippery slope isn’t far away and I refuse to look like many men my age who have clearly given up – given up on caring about what they look like, about other people’s opinions and any chance of a feminine double take. Certainly the last thing I want is Liv to start taking a motherly role when it comes to my dress sense …
‘Dad, you’re not wearing that shirt with those trousers, are you?’
Reflections
Don’t let your wardrobe decline into embarrassment for your sake and your children’s.
Letting your children pick the clothes they want to wear works in the long run. Patience and fashion-blindness is required, though.
Being confident and competent to buy clothes for your children is desirable. Don’t abdicate the task even if you have a significant other with exceptional fashion sense.
Get your children to have a financial stake in their purchases whenever possible. This fundamentally changes the way they value and care for those items.
When you’re buying clothes for yourself take someone with you whose taste you trust. This will help avoid buyer’s remorse or looking odd.
Never allow your daughter to assume the role of your fashion advisor. Unless, of course, she’s over twenty and a fashion designer. Then listen carefully and do what you’re told.
8. The F Word, Alright?
Life is too short to stuff a mushroom.
Storm Jameson (journalist and author, 1891-1986)
Cooking has a polarising effect on people. You either love it or you see it as a chore. As a single dad I’ve grown to dislike it, though I’d stop short of saying I hate it. Cooking is required to keep my children alive and somewhat quiet as they tend to become fixated with food when they’re hungry.
I can’t remember disliking cooking with the same intensity when I was married. Rose and I would regularly cook together and when the children were tiny and finding time to go out for dinner was hard, we had dinner parties at home for just us. One of us would cook the entrée and dessert and the other the main. It’s possibly the absence of adult company, coupled with Rog and Liv’s fondness for plain food, that makes cooking a chore far closer to doing the washing than a pleasure.
Rog is more adventurous with food but Liv, until recently that is, is a food bore. I find this strange as she loves cooking programmes with their extravagant food spectacles. Place anything actually resembling this in front of her and wait for the look of disbelief. You end up cooking for the lowest common denominator, in my case Liv. And so we end up eating unexciting food. Thankfully she’s starting to change as her tastes develop; relatively innocuous dishes like butter chicken are now gracing our table.
I prefer food that requires minimal handling, like roasts. Turn on the oven, put the roast in oven and go watch TV. Perfect. One evening, however, early in my life as a single dad, I decided to be adventurous and cook something fancy. I can’t remember what it was except that it contained chicken and a range of spices I had to buy. It took planning and preparation, not to mention the time actually cooking. Surprisingly, it was really good, even if I do say so myself. I plated it nicely (I used that phrase only to show that cooking shows are like passive smoking) and we sat down to my version of Come Dine With Me. ‘Bon appetit, les enfants.’ They looked at it, picked at it and pushed it around the plate. I encouraged them to give it a try but they were having none of it. So I buttered a stack of bread and they were happy. My days of cooking haute cuisine were over. The majority of the spices were never used again and were thrown out years later when I saw their best-before dates. In my naivety I hadn’t thought spices would go off.
I know people such as Cathy and Uri (a university colleague) who counter the differing tastes of their family by cooking, apparently happily, different meals for everyone. That should be illegal. It would be like splitting the washing based on whose clothes they were. It’s hard enough for me to be bothered with the whites-and-coloured palaver – which I thought was an urban myth until the children ended up with pink sheets. I told them they were new and, as they like new stuff, they were pleased. You have to think on your feet to stay one step ahead of your children.
For evening meals when I have the children my first task when I arrive home and I’m greeted by a hungry deputation is to deftly sidestep them and grab a cold beer. That’s after my nanny has gone – must keep up appearances. Then I start working out what to rustle up for dinner. Typically I haven’t thought much about it until then, which is why we are well known at a number of local restaurants. I’v
e improved over the years but I’m miles away from the apparent gold standard, which is shopping with a meal plan for the week. That makes me feel tired.
I think food expectations have risen in recent years thanks to the plethora of cooking shows now on. There are chefs of all shapes, sizes and tastes whipping up exotic and fancy dishes while the audience sit salivating Pavlov-like. Meanwhile I’m cooking pasta, opening the sauce and buttering bread. You can’t live up to the standard that others have set. It’s like taking your date to a body-building competition. Madness. Let him or her watch Australia’s Biggest Loser and they’ll look at you with renewed delight.
Then there’s the implausibility of cooking shows which I thought were meant to be part of the reality TV genre. I’ll pick on Jamie Oliver’s show 15-Minute Meals. The fifteen minutes doesn’t include the time Jamie spends wandering around the farmers’ market. Nor does it include the years required to assemble a kitchen stocked with every condiment and implement known to mankind. Fifteen minutes? Reality? Yeah, right.
My life and kitchen aren’t like that. I admit it would be nice to open the fridge and grab chives, leeks, lemongrass (I’m not sure that even goes in the fridge), gluten and acid-free cherry tomatoes and freshly filleted orange roughy. That indicates a level of planning that I don’t possess. I stock the fridge on a Sunday with a varied range of items and then work it out on the night. Items that don’t get used quickly tend to linger. Leeks, for example, when they are rediscovered after a week or two look similar to flaccid spring onions.
My claim to fame in the kitchen is my talent for juggling eggs. The first time I demonstrated this skill to the children they were equally terrified and amazed at the risk involved. I juggled for about eight seconds before one got away and splatted, as eggs do when they hit the ground. Rog and Liv both stared open-mouthed. I thought it wasn’t a bad effort considering I hadn’t juggled in years and then it was with cricket balls. I was inspired to have another crack, excuse the pun, and I went to get another egg but I was thwarted by the members of my audience who leapt to the eggs’ defence.