The Wrong Trousers

Bert was getting ready to make a delivery yesterday morning. He was wearing a threadbare shirt, filthy cords turned up at the ankle and grubby Birkenstocks. “You’re not going to walk into a garden centre looking like that, are you?” I yapped. “These are my working clothes,” says he. “For God’s sake,” says I. “People will think you’re a tramp! At least change your trousers.” “But I have no trousers,” says he. “Your arse!” says I. “Your drawers and wardrobes are full of trousers. Wait there till I get you a pair.” I brought him down a pair of Levis and, with enough to do, he changed into them. “You can get changed back into your filthy old trousers when you get back.” I said. And so he did.

Later that evening he had the job of taking Aunt Lizzie back to Kells. After a day in the tunnels and the vegetable patch he was even dirtier than before. “Do I have to change my trousers?” he enquired. “Ach no. Sure you’ll do. You’ll only be going in somewhere to buy wine and what odds if you’re bogging. They’ll not know you and they’ll just think you’re a crazy eccentric.”

He brought home the wine. We relaxed in the cool of the evening.

“I got the wine in Kells.”

”Did you?”

”Aye. And I ran into Sam Greer. He was asking if you were still working at the place down the road. And I could see that the girl at the checkout was pricking up her ears.”

”Oh dear God! And you standing there like a dirty hobo!”

”I said you were.”

”I’m the only woman works there! They’ll connect me with you!”

”And I said to him, ‘We got married you know!’”

“You didn’t!”

“I did. And that’s not the worst of it. I looked down and weren’t my fly buttons open and my pubes sticking out!”