Knot bad for a Windsor!
QUESTION Is the Windsor tie knot banned by the Armed Forces?
THE Windsor is a wide, symmetrical, triangular tie knot. It is especially suited for a spread or cutaway collar that can properly accommodate a larger knot.
Popularly thought to be named after the Duke of Windsor (Edward VIII before his abdication), its association with the Duke means it has been frowned upon in the Army, though it is not banned.
However, it is the only tie knot used by all personnel in the RAF and the Air Training Corps when wearing black tie in uniform.
The knot is thought to have been created by the Duke’s grandfather, Edward VII. The son of Queen Victoria was a style icon and his fat, four-in-hand tie knot using thick, expensive fabric led to copycat styles using cheaper fabrics, which probably resulted in the first Windsor.
Like his grandfather, the Duke of Windsor had a keen sartorial sense. Short and not particularly handsome, he nevertheless was a popular subject of the paparazzi of the day — partly owing to his eccentric fashion sense.
The Duke had bespoke ties made by Hawes & Curtis, the Jermyn Street shirtmaker, specially requesting them with a thicker interlining, which made the knot bigger. The narrow end was often worn longer than the wide end, tucked into his belted trousers. This added to the bulk of the knot and much of the time they were worn without a dimple.
In A Family Album, a nostalgic look back on his life featuring pictures and fashion tips, which he had published in 1960, the Duke noted he was not responsible for the tie knot named in his honour: ‘The so-called Windsor knot was, I believe, regulation wear for GIs during the war, when American college boys adopted it, too.
‘But, in fact, I was in no way responsible for this. The knot to which the Americans gave my name was a double knot in a narrow tie — a Slim Jim, as it is sometimes called.’
Dawn Newitt, Newbury, Berks.
QUESTION Why is a throw at the wicket in cricket or at a fair known as a shy?
SHY has two definitions in Dr Annandale’s dictionary of 1917. Both ‘to start away from an object that causes fear’ and ‘to throw obliquely, probably from the verb skew, usually used colloquially’.
If something was thrown awkwardly towards him, my father would say: ‘What’s this, a cockshy?’ I have always associated the word with indifferent attempts at winning coconuts in fairgrounds.
However, Henry Hargreaves, a pupil at Burnley Grammar School in 1760, wrote in his diary for March 11, which was Shrove Tuesday: ‘We only had one lesson today and then we club’d at cocks.’
Bennett’s History Of Burnley tells us that ‘on Shrove Tuesdays, the school held an official cockfight and bonfire’ and that ‘most cockfights in the 18th century were really cockshies, in which the boys threw stones at a bird that had been trained by hard experience to dodge the missiles . . . this was an annual event until 1795 when the school authorities abolished it.’
Any cock that escaped was reported to have been claimed by the headmaster.
So both definitions, dodging and throwing, seem to apply.
Kathy Fishwick, Rossendale, Lancs.
QUESTION How dangerous are cows?
FURTHER to the informative answer to this question, my mother used to say: ‘Never go between a cow and her calf. This is when cows are most dangerous.’
A cow will chase after you, while a bull will put its head down and charge, so when it comes thundering towards you, all you have to do is sidestep it.
Mike Benson, Bedford. THE Health and Safety Executive figures quoted previously omitted to say which breed is more likely to cause harm.
From my many miles of countryside walking, the one breed that always gives problems, whether they have calves or not, is the totally black Holstein Cross. These are large cows with a bad attitude to anything that crosses their sight line.
Val Bowers, Bournemouth, Dorset.
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