Living the Roles.

There was a man walking across the town today wearing what I think of as the professional person’s regulation uniform – expensive suit, long designer raincoat, and carrying a big umbrella which also had a swish label on it.  He was tall and heavily built, a bit bloated but basically well groomed. On the other side of the street was a short guy wearing scruffy tracksuit bottoms (jogging pants to young people and Americans,) a worn old jacket and a tatty sweater. He had stubble on his chin, lank, unkempt hair, and his skin carried that pale, waxy hue that tends to characterise those from the poor end of town. He looked anything but professional.

I realised that I didn’t see those two men in terms of one having been successful in life and the other not. I saw them as simply two types of character, each playing his role in this interesting, but probably ultimately meaningless, thing called life. What struck me as the biggest difference between them was that the big guy was trying to show me how successful he’d been, whereas the little guy wasn’t.

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And on the subject of clothes, I bought a winter sweater from the Sally Army charity shop to replace my 25-year-old blue one that’s becoming too ragged to wash. (It’s the same style and colour as one Bill Murray wore in Ghostbusters!) It might be second hand, but you wouldn’t know it. 70% wool and only £3.99. I was going to have a portion of chips for my lunch, but decided that if I scrubbed that extravagance off the list, the sweater would have cost me only £2.69. That’s the way to live.