Thursday, July 1, 2010

182. The neighbourhood fashion plate


Wal had long considered his sartorial splendour his own business. Growing up the youngest in a staunch Catholic family with five sisters, he soon learnt that he differed slightly from them and that the only way to get peace was to listen then ignore, which he did with aplomb.

Exhorted from the pulpit as a teenager to give to the community, Wal volunteered at Vinnies in Charring Cross and spent Saturday afternoons for two years sorting clothing out of cardboard boxes and jiggling them onto misshapen hangers. He quickly realised the treasure-trove that came through each store, and vowed never to shop elsewhere for clothing. Having eventually succumbed to bunions, he sensibly bought his shoes at that bushmen’s outfitter.

Once his girth expanded in middle age, he took to braces, a choice reinforced by the near universal and hysterical condemnation of his siblings. Stirring the pot had always delighted him.

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