I was just about to get into the shower when Chris stood in the bathroom doorway and posed for me in a very grudging manner.

“Will this do?” he asked and pulled a miserable face (which made me cross).

“But you look normal,” I said crossly. “Why can’t you go along with it and make the most of it like everyone else?”

With a face like King Kong, Chris skulked off downstairs (probably with a “Bah, humbug” under his breath. A few minutes later, when I had jumped out of the shower and was dripping wet, he appeared again, this time he was wearing cream trousers, a maroon shirt and stripey tie.

“Now you look as though you’re going to a wedding,” I exclaimed. (I wanted to burst out laughing but held back to avoid incensing him any more.)

“Well, you tell me what to wear then!” he said, incensed.

“How hard can it be to look like a hippy, or a John Travolta, or a Huggy Bear character?” I as retorted. (Remember Huggy from Starski and Hutch?) “With your hair, surely you could make it a bit “Afro”, even though you’re blond!”

“But I never was a hippy, or a “Saturday Night Fever” man – guess I could try to look like Huggy Bear, if I back-combed my hair, but then I’d have to try to walk like him and talk like him…” Chris tried to be more obliging.

Swinging his shoulders like Huggy Bear, Chris went back downstairs and I joined him in our bedroom a few minutes later. It was easy for me; I put on some aquamarine floaty trousers, a skinny-rib summer top, a lacy top over that, some beads around my ankles, a snake bracelet on an upper arm and a big necklace that could possibly have been a present from Ten Bears – and I was a hippy, well, a makeshift hippy.

“What about a ‘Medallion Man’? I bet you wore a wide belt and medallion in the seventies?” I asked in response to his new “Beach-boy” look (half-mast trousers).

“Never!”

“Didn’t you ever go out?” I was incredulous. “Maybe you should go back that first outfit – the all black look – and you could wear a thick gold chain with it.”

Chris concurred after complaints that he would be hot in long sleeves. Stood there with his shirt open, my thick gold chain around his neck and his blond curly hair back-combed, I thought he looked like his mum – but I didn’t tell him at the time in case he might be put off and would have to start from scratch again.

We arrived at St.Mary’s Hall (the barbecue was a fund-raiser for the church hall) an hour later than stated on the tickets. The barbecue food was nearly all gone and everyone was sat eating at tables in the open air while they listened to the live band (who were quite good). While the nice man on the gate rushed around to find us chairs, we surveyed the gathering… there wasn’t a hippy, John Travolta, Huggy Bear or “Medallion Man” in sight, apart from Chris, who actually looked more like a used car salesman from the eighties (or his mum).

It threatened to rain and the air turned chilly. Chris was rather glad that he had opted for the long sleeves and warm black cords. I froze.