It was pretty cold today and I thought I would take this into account as I got dressed and add an additional layer of clothing. Usually I would just wear a T-shirt, but the first item I picked up off the shelf was a vest. I only have two vests, which I bought about three years ago thinking they might make me look as cool as Bruce Willis (yes,
that cool), but then had decided not to wear when my last girlfriend took the piss out of me when she saw me wearing one of them. "But I am cool, like Bruce Willis," I told her.
"Yes, you are
that cool," she confirmed.
But today I thought fuck it, the vest is a fine undergarment and is really no different than a T-shirt, so why shouldn't I wear one. It will keep me warm, whilst not encroaching over the neck-line of my shirt. So I put it on.
And you know what, the world kept on spinning.
It got me thinking about what a poor press the vest seems to get. This goes right back to childhood. My mum, I recall, was always very insistent that I put my vest on and when I was very little I would do this unquestioningly, but once I got to about 7 or 8, I became aware that the other children thought that wearing a vest was sissy and weird (just as it was embarrassing and wrong, in the lawbook of the child, to do a poo during school hours). Wearing a vest would be a cause for taunting and even bullying. I remember having arguments with my mother, she insistent I put on a vest of a cold morning, me insisting that I wouldn't. It seemed very important to me to fit in. In hindsight, as a grown man, I can understand why my mother wanted me to be warm and can't really fathom why my playmates felt that what undergarment I happened to be wearing was in any way relevant.
Which would be OK, but the anti-vest conditioning clearly stays with us into adult life. Admittedly there is something a little fogey-ish about the vest and maybe it's something that we associate with old men (so my lack of reluctance to wear one is perhaps another indication of my slow decline to senility), but it's still just the same as a T-shirt. If you have a T-shirt under your regular shirt, you are still indicating that you are too sissy-ish to cope with the cold, so why should the vest get all the bad press, merely because it was specifically designed for this purpose and can't be worn on the beach during the summer without making you look like a wassock?
So I rebelled against the rebellion and went out and did my gig in Bethnall Green for War Child UK wearing a vest. It seemed to go OK. I can't say that it would have gone better if I hadn't had the vest on. Maybe some people sensed it.
To be honest, by then I had forgotten I was wearing a vest. I remembered when I got home and got undressed. I felt proud of myself and went to bed. Still wearing my vest. For extra warmth.
