A shorts story

Thighs chapped and sore by wet grey flannel flogging around them in the freezing Worcestershire winters of privileged prep school misery generated in me a longing for long trousers. The move to long from short was profound. To find an equivalent in the progress of a child of today is beyond me as I can’t find any parallels. Long trousers were an iPhone, were liberty, were privilege, were a new hopeful life. We were doomed to wear fucking awful clothes, to be seen and not heard or ideally not seen and not heard but to be put on trains and waved to as we disappeared down the line to be cared for by a mixture of recently demobbed pederasts, priests and brilliant teachers; during this time shorts were for sports. My father and his friends wore shorts that had little to do with that nomenclature as they were as wide as they were long and they were very long; far too long to be short. I have often thought that those responsible for designing uniforms for the British army worked for the enemy or someone very spiteful who had been turned down by the selection board as he made shorts that made tall men short and short men ridiculous….the long, the short and the tall all look short in shorts as they were long. And then I went to the South of France and saw people who wore shorts which didn’t make them look complete cunts. Around that moment I decided, at 7 years old, that I would live there one day.