‘Come on, man, wake up! What are you doing lying here like this, dressed like this?’ He was a young black man, confident, street-wise, and he sounded let-down, disappointed. I think it was the suit and tie. He didn’t like to see good clothes treated like that. The tie meant I was a conservative type with a comfortable home to go to, and I had no business making an exhibition of myself like this.
I sat up. His minicab was right over there, he said. He could take me home. Or, better still, there was a cheap hotel just around the corner. He could walk me to the end of the street and point it out. It wasn’t good for me to be laying there on the pavement like this, man. I could get robbed or anything.
Perhaps I should have told him that he had formed the wrong impression. I’d worn the suit and tie initially to attend a garden party celebrating the revival of the English essay. I didn’t normally dress like this. And the pavement was comfortable. I was happy to be here. It is where I expect to spend my retirement. And what is it, anyway, about a suit and tie, I wondered, that makes otherwise intelligent people jump to the wrong conclusion?
Earlier in the day I’d met a retired Australian journalist, Rob, 40 years on Melbourne’s Herald Sun. He was sitting at the next café table. He’d said ‘G’day!’ and I’d said ‘All right?’ and we’d got chatting. No one in their right mind spends 40 years on the Melbourne Herald Sun without accumulating a fund of funny stories and Rick told them with aplomb. Then we went to the pub for a pint, where one thing led to another, and by the early evening we’d been in every pub between Portland Place and Soho.
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