If it is true that we are what we eat (as I’ve read somewhere), does it therefore follow that we are also what we wear? I certainly hope not! I can assure you that I am nothing like those nasty grey trousers you may have seen me wearing yesterday afternoon when I was re-pointing the brick wall by the road.

I’m afraid the trousers in question were bought on impulse from our local Lidl’s store about three weeks ago. In fact, I nearly bought the same trousers the week before but thought better of it. In justification, I must tell you that the strange impulse to purchase those nasty grey trousers was not based at all on their aesthetic merits, it owed everything to the matter of sizing and size; you see they were a medium and they looked as if they would fit me.

I don’t know what came over me on that particular day; I remember taking them out of their cellophane wrapper and holding them up for inspection; I observed the dark grey with some apprehension (grey is not my colour) but dismissed my objections as they would be on my lower half and could be teamed up with brighter, less draining colours. The material was an odd Lycra-mixture that stretched and didn’t require ironing, yet the trousers had over-sewn creases running down the middle of each front panel. I held them up to me and wondered if they would look better on. “Do they look a tad ‘old-ladyish’?” I asked myself. “Not with you in them,” a part of me answered quite convincingly.

A week later I tried the nasty grey trousers on for the first time. They fitted a treat (I was right about something). However, none of my pretty tops or jumpers matched or could redeem the matronly effect they produced, and I decided I would not be seen dead wearing them in the public’s eye; they would have to be restricted to wearing at home – Chris wouldn’t mind. A couple of mornings later I tried them on again and asked Chris what he thought. He looked at me for an excessively long time before answering, “Well, they fit alright, they’re okay…” The way he said it implied “comfy but ugly, wear them if you must, but I wouldn’t touch them with a barge pole!” They went back into the chest of drawers.

Yesterday afternoon I decided to do a bit of mortaring on our brick wall by the front gate. It was cold and windy and I wondered what to wear… What better than to don those nasty trousers, which wouldn’t matter if mortar got on them? So I spent twenty minutes trying to find something old, warm, but not too ugly to go with them. I settled for an orange and white striped long-sleeved top and put a thicker orange cardigan on top; it didn’t look very nice so I put on an apron over the top. My charming outfit was later enhanced when my neighbour, Ron, brought out a navy blue baseball cap for me to wear – to keep the hair out of my eyes.

Unfortunately, it is school half-term holidays this week and, despite the cold and damp, scores of holiday-makers and families with children were out and about, seemingly all of whom wanted to pass by our stretch of pavement while I was trying to re-point the wall. Some people stopped to chat – a plumber going into our next door neighbours’ place thought I had “done it before” (which I had, three months ago, but hadn’t finished the job); a young man of about twenty-four was on holiday from the South Coast and imagined we must have great views of the sea; an older lady thought I was doing “a grand job!” (people are nice); and a family of five on bicycles rang their bells to make me move my bucket and give them room to pass without the need for them to dismount.

“This is footpath, not a bicycle track; the bicycle track ends down there”, I said, removing my bucket and my bottom.

I was feeling somewhat miffed at having to move my gear when it was they who should have got off their bikes and walked past me. A pedestrian coming from the other way agreed with me.

“They do it on the seawall too,” he said.

“No-one would mind if they got off,” I said. (I like to ride along the seawall too.)

The cyclists didn’t utter a word of apology, they just scowled. I read their thoughts. I bet they were thinking, “What a nasty woman, in her funny baseball cap and nasty grey trousers…!”