Open Writing

It would seem to me that for many men the ideal wife is a workhorse during the day and a racehorse at night. Well gentlemen you are going to have to start making up your mind which you prefer because transforming from one to the other requires a great deal of time, changing of clothes and grooming.

It is well nigh impossible to buff up to that catwalk model image when your nails are worn down and dirt-filled from weeding the garden, your hair has gone lank from standing over the pot stirring the casserole and the baby has chucked up all over your shoulder for the fourth time that day.

Perhaps this is why mistresses are so plentiful.

Traditionally a mistress swans around in her lingerie or nightie all day- not just a practical flannelette nightie but one of those shimmering, satin sheaths which are too hot to sleep in and are good only for enticing and removing. This is one area where men appear to be in accordance with each other when it comes to the subject of women and clothes. To fellows there is no more redundant sort of clothing than sleepwear. Even seventy-eight year old Gwen from next door shyly confessed to me that her Stan still hides her nightie from time to time. While I found this a little tricky to envisage it did give me hope for the future.

Clothes are so much more important to a woman than they are to your average man. Just because he can make do with the same five t-shirts and five pairs of shorts for ten years does not mean that she can. Mind you, have you been inside a menswear store lately? No wonder men are bored with clothes. Even the men's surfwear shops here in Australia are just a sea of black clothing, as if everyone is scared to make a fashion faux pas so they've decided to play it safe and all wear the same.

Women, on the other hand, are bamboozled with choice when it comes to clothes. They can decide to reveal or conceal as much of their bodies as they like and swathe themselves in all colours of the rainbow if they should so choose. Summers here are extremely hot and young girls, in particular wear, well, not a lot. With the onset of warm weather last year my teenage son remarked that, "Pretty girls seem to be hatching out all over the place."

They did constantly serve as a big distraction from his learner driver lessons, I noticed. This year denim micro minis were the must-have item for young girls, even if they did have an unflattering tendency to ride up on larger thighs. On New Year's Eve, as we returned by train from the Harbour Bridge fireworks display, we all noticed that micro minis were not the ideal attire for when you were lying on the station platform, drunk.

Women can also use clothes as a deterrent. A prime example of this was a maiden aunt of my mother's who lived in Yorkshire. Aunty Ida lived alone in her bungalow and was a bit of an enigma to us naive lot because she never seemed to have male visitors. Only butch, German schoolmarms came to stay. Rain or shine, Aunty Ida permanently hung an enormous pair of yellowing, billowing, elasticated bloomers on the wash line at the side of her house, which was in full public view.

My uncle reckoned that these unflattering garments were the cause of his aunt's singular status and he'd say, "If Anty Ida's serious abaht leukin' ter find 'ersen a man, then she cud do wit' tekkin' them thar passion killers off t'clothes line fer starters."