A letter from a reader

At 67, I had been walking the dog in my husband's old coat for eleven years, because nothing of mine had pockets

The longest thing I have written in years is the note for the dog sitter, two sides about the labrador's tablets and which gate sticks, and she still rang me twice. I am not a writer, and it has never been my place to tell another woman what she ought to wear.

But three different women asked me about my jacket on our Sunday walk round the mere at Ellesmere, with the labrador pulling for the swans the whole way, and I have explained it enough times now that it seemed easier to write it down properly.

It started in the car park. My sister June had driven over to walk with us, and she got out of her car, looked at me standing by the boot in Geoff's old green shooting coat with the sleeves turned up twice, and said it.

Mags, you look like you have come to count the swans for the council.

She was right, and I knew it. That coat came down past my knees, it smelt faintly of the dog no matter how often it was washed, and I had been wearing it every single morning for eleven years. Not because I liked it. Because of the pockets.

I did not choose that. That is what I want to be clear about. Nobody decides to spend their sixties in her husband's cast-off. It happens one muddy morning at a time, when the lead and the biscuits and the bags and the keys all need somewhere to go, and the only thing in the house that will take them is his.

How it happens

I was not always like this. When our daughter was small I had a navy jacket with brass buttons that went everywhere with me, and I felt smart in it for years.

What changed was not me. It was what the shops seem to think a woman our age carries.

Go and look. The jackets made for us have a pocket the size of a raffle ticket, or no pockets at all, as if we only ever walk from the car to the church. And the ones with proper pockets are the walking anoraks in the colours of a wet field, cut for somebody about to climb Snowdon.

Nobody seems to have noticed that most of us have a dog, a set of keys, a phone, a hanky and a pair of reading glasses, and only two hands. So we borrow the coat that has room, and we stop looking like ourselves somewhere round the first gate.

What I had wrong

Here is the bit I got most wrong, and I suspect I am not the only one.

I thought dog walking did not count. I thought you wore whatever did the job for the walk, and you saved looking nice for the afternoons.

It turns out the walk is the best hour of my day. It is where I see half the people I know.

I had been choosing between pockets and looking like myself for so long that I had stopped expecting both. Something warm that does not weigh you down, with room for everything, that still looks like you picked it because you liked it.

That is all I had been missing. It took me until 67 and my sister in a car park to see it.

The jacket is called the Kelly

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 Kelly. A soft khaki jacket, a warm sandy stone colour, with a small round collar, a row of gold buttons down the front, and turned-back cuffs with a little tab and a gold button on each. Low down on the front there are two big rounded patch pockets, each with a tiny bow at the side. It comes down to mid-thigh. They do it in black and brown as well.

It is warm, which I expected, and it is light, which I did not. Geoff's coat kept the wind out by sheer weight, so that by the far end of the mere my shoulders ached. This one I forget I have on.

The pockets are the part I keep telling people about. They are properly roomy. The lead goes in one with the bags, the biscuits and my keys go in the other, my phone fits without poking out, and my hands are free for the dog. And it is loose enough to have a good jumper underneath without looking like I have wrapped myself in a duvet.

What happened at the mere

We go round the mere most Sundays, the long way, along the water past the swans and through the trees and back to the little café by the water for a pot of tea on the bench outside while the dog dries off.

I wore the Kelly for the first time. Three women asked me about it before we had got the tea. A woman with a soaking wet spaniel who stopped us on the path, a younger woman behind me in the café queue, and Nesta, who has run the café hatch for as long as I have been walking that loop, and has never said a word to me beyond mind the dog near the cakes.

She handed me my tea, looked me up and down, and said I looked like I had come to Ellesmere for the day instead of for the dog. From Nesta, that is practically a medal.

What I noticed more than the asking, though, was that I did not think about it once. I bent to unclip the lead by the water. I found the biscuits without putting anything down. I sat on that cold bench with my tea and did not wish I had brought something warmer, or feel I ought to explain why I was dressed for lunch.

On the Tuesday I wore it into Whitchurch for the market and a coffee with June, and nobody would have guessed it had spent Sunday with a pocket full of dog biscuits. It went round the mere with the labrador one day and into town the next, and it was right for both.

Three things I have learned since

One. Pockets are not a luxury. If a jacket cannot take the lead, the bags and your keys, you will end up in somebody else's coat. Check before you buy anything for the walk. These take everything.

Two. Warm does not have to mean heavy. I had assumed that anything which kept the wind off the water would feel like carrying a rug round three miles of footpath. This keeps me comfortable on a raw morning and I can still sit in the café without feeling cooked.

Three. Order your usual size. It runs from a UK 8 to a 20. I am usually a 14, I took the 12/14, and there is room for a proper jumper underneath.

About the price

I want to be straightforward about this, because it was the thing that made me suspicious.

The Kelly is £37.95. It was £76.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch, because I have paid more than that for a walking anorak that gave up at the seams by the second winter.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no department store taking a cut in the middle, and they have a sale on at the moment while the first of the autumn stock comes in.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and went and read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. Not the suspiciously perfect five you see on some websites, which if I am honest made me trust it rather more. One woman from Wem had written, “Light enough to drive in, warm enough for the walk, and smart enough that nobody guesses I have dog biscuits in the pocket.”

Then I ordered the brown one as well, for June, who has been walking her terrier in an anorak that is older than her grandson.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sat on that bench by the mere with a pot of tea between us and the dogs dripping at our feet, this is what I would say.

If you have been walking the dog in your husband's coat, or an anorak you would not be seen in anywhere else, because it is the only thing with room in the pockets, then it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and look.

Not because a jacket will change your life. It will not. But there is something in going out of your own front door with the dog and feeling like yourself for the best hour of the day, and I had quietly stopped expecting it. I would rather you did not stop expecting it too.

Two practical things. The sale is on at the moment, and the middle sizes go first, which I found out because the 12/14 in brown had gone when I went back for June and I had to wait for it. And the first of the autumn stock is already going, so I would not leave it until the weather turns.

Geoff has his coat back on the peg. The walk round the mere is mine again.

Maggie