You can’t compromise on some things
‘It was no ordinary puffa. This was a puffa for a dad who hasn’t given up’
AS you get older your life becomes a series of compromises. If you have traditionally seen yourself as deviant, those compromises are more difficult. But equally, as you get older, and especially when you come into your forties, you also get more and more set in your deviance. So it’s a balancing act. I think the trick is to give in on the little things that make life easier, and to keep up the fight in your head and your heart on the important stuff. Key to this is the ability to distinguish between what matters and what doesn’t.
So I give in on a lot of things just to get on with people and situations, while trying to stay true to the things that are important. Indeed, if you just go along in the ways that don’t hugely matter, it saves your energy for the important fights.
So having held out for ages I decided I should probably get a puffa jacket. I had traditionally held out on puffa jackets because they made me look like the Michelin man. But there seems to have been a flurry of activity on puffa technology in the last few years and puffas now look a little less like a sausage bursting at the seams, or some kind of flotation device.
And the thing is they are handy. And they suit the life I lead. Many of the nice things I have bought down the years did not actually suit the life I lead. But I bought them anyway, often unthinkingly. But the puffa, I have put a lot of time and thought into, and I still haven’t committed the 100 quid to buying it, even though it would make perfect sense in my life.
I need one for after I’ve been swimming in a cold sea, I need one for walking or cycling around. I need one in general. It makes no sense that I don’t have one. But yet I don’t.
I tell myself it is because I just haven’t met the right puffa. I’ve kissed many frogs, but have not found my prince. I’ve even gone international in my puffa search. In London, I’ve popped into Uniqlo, purveyor of bargain Japanese basics made with the latest technical fabrics, but I didn’t commit the 50 quid for one of their ultra-light down puffas. I’ve searched outdoorsy shops, feeling like an imposter among all the manly men and womanly women in there, but to no avail.
I thought I found the right puffa for me recently. It wasn’t cheap but there was no reason I shouldn’t love it. It was Stone Island, an Italian brand once favoured by football casuals, a brand for which I have an affection due to my connection with the international brotherhood of New Order fans. Stone Island is also the high end of sports casual, made with the best fabrics, and always with the slightly ostentatious brand label buttons on the sleeve. So this was a puffa, but no ordinary puffa. This was a puffa for a dad who hasn’t given up. This was a puffa that said I know my labels. This was a puffa that said, “I might wear a puffa but I am not puffa man”.
My woman on the inside in one of the stores agreed that I could buy it on appro and do some posing in it at home for a few days. It was my birthday and my wife said she would even buy it for me. So home I went, and for a week, each evening, I tried it on. I tried it on for various situations, with various things. I tried it on with jeans, with shorts, with cycling-to-work gear, with going swimming gear, with casual-mucking-about gear.
And it was beautiful. Light as a feather and lovely material and fashioned more as an overshirt, so it didn’t look like the same puffa everyone else was wearing. So I was not giving in, I was not becoming puffa man. And I kept nearly deciding to keep it. But not quite. And then one night I had an epiphany. I realised that the problem was not with every single puffa in the world, even this one, the king of puffas. The problem was clearly me. I could not bring myself to love even this most magnificent, most unpuffa of puffas, because I simply wasn’t born to wear a puffa. There are some things you can compromise on as you get older without changing who you fundamentally are, and the trick is knowing which are the important things you don’t give in on, and which are the unimportant things you can give in on.
And it turns out that a puffa is one of those things you can’t give in on. I am not puffa man.
Though I admit I will be checking into Uniqlo the next time I’m in London, just in case.