Why my wardrobe belongs in the V & A…

Ihave decided to donate several items of my clothing to the Victoria & Albert Museum. My idea is that they can be put in a special exhibition, called “Seven Decades of Corduroy.” To help the curator, I have written a draft of his or her introduction to the exhibition catalogue:

“Special note should be taken of the ink stains in the right buttock area of the trousers where the distinguished wearer’s felt-tip pen has leaked in the back pocket. Another significant feature is the number of white marks on the front of the sweaters (exhibits 18-22). These are almost certainly toothpaste and suggest that the wearer wandered round the house, in a dream, while cleaning his teeth, instead of leaning over the bathroom basin.

“You will see that the crew necks of two of the sweaters (exhibits 19 and 21) are sagging. This is the result of the wearer plunging in his hand in to reach for his shirt pocket to get the mobile phone, which he thought was ringing. Usually he was mistaken.

“In the Footwear section of the exhibition (Gallery IX) there is a fine example of a typical shoe, as worn by this distinguished personage. Observe that it contains no fewer than three insoles, suggesting the shoe was bought online, turned out to be a size too large, but was never returned. Note the scuffing at the front of the shoe, which is also curled upwards. There are also three pairs of humorous socks he was forbidden to wear.

“Other items of particular interest are the scarf, a Christmas present, which was a victim of the great moth plague of 2003, the tie he was wearing when he went out to a restaurant and leaned too close to the candle, and the jacket that was politely turned down by a charity shop, because it was not considered to be of outstanding aesthetic quality.”

Some people have a terrible fear of the telephone’s ring. “Who could it be at this hour?” they yelp, whatever the time of day. They approach the phone with appalled trepidation.

Acute phone dread can be a drawback in a career, but fortunately Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs is an enlightened employer and takes on sufferers. This is the scene occurring in a tax office near you:

“Is that a phone, that has been going on all this time?”

“Don’t answer it. It’s almost certainly a heavy-breather. These people seem to get some kind of perverted kick out of ringing up tax inspectors.” “Or it could be a wrong number.” “Whoever it is, he’s not giving up. It’s not my turn to answer anyway. It’s Miss Brinkley’s turn. Where is she?”

“Off sick. Migraine, apparently. Constant ringing in the ears.” “I had a cold caller recently.” “What was it? PPI? Accident? Charity?”

“It was some individual who said he had a query about his tax code. Just like that. Out of the blue. Cheek.”

“We should go for an early lunch. This non-stop ringing is putting me off my Sudoku. Shall we go to the Italian place?”

“Oh, not the Italian place. The service is dreadful. It’s impossible to catch the waiter’s eye. Infuriating. Let’s go to the sandwich bar. Maybe the phone will have stopped ringing when we get back.”

“Right… Oh, this damn lift! I press the button a dozen times and it never comes.”

Forget about all those red deer, barnacle geese and otters, paraded on Autumnwatch, it is time to pay attention to the seasonal signs witnessed by city dwellers. One of the earliest harbingers of autumn is the increased proportion of Chinese and Japanese tourists seen in our streets wearing surgical masks. (Aren’t our British germs good enough for them?)

In London you will hear the angry roar of chainsaws from above, as men in hard hats prune the plane trees back to stumpy sculptures. They throw the branches into machines that chew them up and sound absolutely furious.

Note how the patio heaters are already starting to sprout in the smoking areas outside pubs, how the pavements are beginning to be carpeted with crushed conkers and how urban foxes become more insolent as they get hungrier.

On misty autumn mornings, you will discover that early schoolboys have written rude words in the wetness on parked cars. This is one of my favourite moments of the year. It means soon I will wake up every day to the sound of frost being scraped off windscreens.