A letter from a reader

At 68, I had spent thirty Bonfire Nights dressed like I had come to sweep up afterwards

The only thing I write down regularly is the score on the back of an envelope when June comes round for rummy, and she checks my adding every time. I am not a writer, and it has never been my place to tell another woman what she ought to wear.

But three women asked me about my jacket at a bonfire on Saturday night, one of them before the first rocket had even gone up, and I have explained it on the phone enough times since that it seemed easier to write it down once.

It started with a photograph. Our daughter was round on a Sunday, scrolling back through her phone for something else entirely, and she stopped on one from last year's bonfire. Brian, Ken, the grandchildren with their sparklers, everybody lit up orange. And me at the back in Brian's old padded coat with a hat pulled down to my eyebrows, holding the flask and four pairs of gloves. She turned the phone round and said it.

Mum, you look like you have come to sweep up afterwards.

I laughed, because she was right and it was funny. Then I made her scroll back further. The year before, the same. And the year before that. Thirty Bonfire Nights, near enough, and in every one I was the woman at the back, dressed for the cold and nothing else, minding everybody's things.

I want to be fair to myself here, and to you if you have a photograph like that. Nobody sets out to be the one holding the flask. It happens one cold night at a time.

How it happens

When I was courting Brian I had a short red jacket with a bit of fluff at the collar, and I wore it to every bonfire in Leeds. I was cold in it, and I did not care one bit.

What changed was not me. It was what they sell a woman my age for going out in the cold.

Go and look. Padded coats down to the knee that make you look like a sleeping bag stood on end. Fleeces in the colours of a car park. Anything with a bit of life to it is cut for a girl of twenty with no hips and no need to keep her neck warm. And all of it labelled practical, which as far as I can tell means nobody expected you to be looked at.

So you buy the padded one because it is warm. You wear it to everything outdoors from October to March. And without ever deciding to, you become the one at the back with the flask.

What I had wrong

I thought it was a straight choice. Warm, or dressed for a night out. You could have one, and at my age, on a wet field in November, the sensible woman picks warm.

It turns out that was never the choice.

What makes an outdoor coat look like a sleeping bag is not the warmth. It is the bulk, and the length, and the colour of a bin bag. Something short that stops at the hip, soft enough to look like you meant it, with a collar that stands up round your neck, keeps you just as warm on a cold night and looks like you came to enjoy yourself.

Warm and dressed up are not opposites. It took me until 68, and my daughter's phone, to find that out.

The jacket is called the Grace

It was June who found it, which I will never hear the end of. She turned up at my door at the end of October in a brown one, short and soft with the collar up, looking like a very expensive teddy bear, and she knew it. She did not say a word. For June, that is a speech.

It is from Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. The jacket is called the Grace. I was not about to turn up to a bonfire looking like a parrot, so I ordered the black. A short jacket with a long, soft pile you want to put your hand on, a little stand-up collar, and one zip up the front.

It is warm without the bulk, which is the whole point of it. I can still lift my arms, pour from a flask and hold a sparkler for a grandchild without feeling like I am wearing a duvet. It stops at the hip, so it does not swallow you, and the collar stands up round your neck so the wind off a field does not find its way in.

And the black is a proper black. I want to say that, because I know what some of you are thinking. It is not the black you wear to a funeral. It is soft and deep and it catches the light, so it looks like you chose it for an evening out, not because it would not show the mud.

What happened at the bonfire

Every year, on the Saturday nearest the fifth, we drive over to Kirkbymoorside, where Brian's cousin Ken lives, for the bonfire on the playing field. Ken does the gate. Brian stands with Ken and tells him he has built it too close to the hedge. I usually hold the flask.

This year the woman beside me at the rope asked where the jacket was from before the first rocket had gone up. A young mum with a little one on her hip and a sparkler asked during the Catherine wheels. And Edith, who has run the parkin stall on that field for twenty-odd years and has never said more to me than do you want it warming, looked me up and down over the trays and said I looked like I had come to light it, not stand behind it.

From Edith, that is a twenty-one-gun salute.

What I noticed more than the asking, though, was that I was not cold, and I was not at the back. I stood at the rope with a cup of tea for the whole display and never once thought about what I had on, apart from when somebody mentioned it.

The next morning I put it straight back on to fetch the papers and walk Wilf round the park, over a jumper and my old trousers, and felt like myself in it. Brian said I looked like I was off somewhere. I was only off to the newsagent. I am taking it anyway.

Three things worth knowing

One. The sizing is honest. It goes from a UK 8 to a 24, and it is the same cut the whole way up, not a different shape once you get past a certain number. I am a 16 and it sits as it should, at the hip and not halfway down my backside.

Two. It goes over everything. A jumper and trousers for the bonfire, a dress for the Christmas do, jeans and a plain top for the shops. It is short enough to show what you have on underneath, and that is half its charm.

Three. Black is the gentle way in. June went for the brown, and it comes in green, red, blue and purple if you are braver than me. But if you have spent years in a padded coat, the black one is how you start.

About the price

I will be straight with you, because the price is what made me suspicious.

The Grace is £32.95. It was £66.00.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because I have paid more than that in town for a padded coat that made me look like a sleeping bag.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, with no department store in the middle taking its cut, and they have a sale on to move the winter stock while the cold sets in.

I do not trust perfect scores, so I went and read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. Mixed enough to sound like real people, so I read on. A woman from Hornsea had written that she bought one for a bonfire and has not taken it off since, and her husband has started calling her the film star. That sounded about right to me.

June has since ordered the red one for Christmas. I have said nothing.

If you were stood at my kitchen table

If you were stood at my kitchen table with a cup of tea, and Brian had gone out to the allotment, this is what I would tell you.

If you go out on a cold night every year dressed for the weather and nothing else, and you are always the one at the back holding everybody's things, it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and have a look.

Not because a jacket is going to change your life. It will not. But there is something in standing at the front on a cold night and feeling like you came to enjoy it that I had let go of without noticing, and I would rather you did not let go of it too.

Two practical things. The sale is on at the moment, and the middle sizes are the ones that go first, which June found out when the 12/14 in brown had gone by the time she went back for her daughter-in-law. And the winter stock never hangs about once the cold properly arrives.

Brian holds the flask now.

Pat