A letter from a reader

At 68, I had spent forty years holding my wrap on with one hand, and Brian had the photographs to prove it

The longest thing I have written since I left school is the list of what goes in which bed on the allotment, and Brian says even that has too many crossings-out. I am not a writer, and I have never once thought it my place to tell another woman what she ought to put on.

But three different women asked me about this wrap at the pub on Sunday, and I have now explained it so many times that it seemed easier to write it down once, properly.

I am careful with money and I will not pretend otherwise. For anything nice, a wedding, a christening, Sunday lunch somewhere with tablecloths, I have always had a wrap. A pashmina, a stole, whatever the shops were calling them that year. It makes an outfit look finished, and it keeps the draught off your arms in a church hall.

What it does not do is stay on. I have spent forty years of weddings holding mine at the front with one hand, hitching it back up every time I reached for my glass, and fishing it off the floor when I stood up for the speeches.

I did not realise how bad it had got until last month, when Brian printed the photographs from our niece’s wedding. He laid them out on the kitchen table, and there I was in every single one, one hand clamped flat to my chest. He looked at them for a long while and said this.

You look like you are being sworn in, Pat.

I laughed, because you do. Then I went through the old albums, and it was the same at the christening, the same at our ruby wedding, the same at every do going back thirty years. Forty years of looking like a woman holding her own coat together.

The rest of the time, I gave up and wore the fleece. It stays on, I will give it that. It also makes me look like I am about to go and check the gutters.

How it happens

I do not think I am unusual in this, and I suspect a good many of you are nodding.

When you get to our age, the shops give you two kinds of thing to keep your shoulders warm. There is the pretty kind, a wrap or a shawl, which looks lovely for the first ten minutes and then spends the evening sliding off one side. And there is the practical kind, a fleece or a zip-up cardigan, which stays put and looks like it came free with the Sunday paper.

Pretty, or practical. Pick one. So you do what I did. You wear the pretty one for occasions and hold it on all night, and you wear the practical one for everything else and stop expecting to look nice on a Tuesday.

I even had a safety pin living in the navy pashmina, pinned at the front like a nappy. That is how far I had got.

What I had wrong

Here is the bit I had most wrong.

I thought the holding-on was just the price of looking nice. That a wrap was always going to slip, and a woman who wanted both hands free had to settle for a fleece.

It was my sister June who put me right. We had a day out in York the week after the photographs, and it was blowing a gale on the city walls. June turned up in a long soft grey thing with tassels at the front, hanging just like a wrap. She had the map in one hand and a cone of chips in the other, and all the way round the walls it did not move an inch.

I asked her where her safety pin was. She held up her arm and said, It has got sleeves, Pat.

That was it. Pretty or practical. I had spent forty years choosing between the two, and it had never once occurred to me that somebody might have just put the sleeves in.

The wrap is called the Susan

It is from Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique I have bought a few bits from for a while now. June had given me the name on the walls, and I looked it up on the train home, mostly to see what the catch was.

It is called the Susan. It is long and soft, with a lovely brushed feel to it, and it goes round your shoulders like a wrap, with the two front ends hanging down long and finished off with tassels. The difference is that it has proper sleeves built in, snug at the wrist, so it cannot slip off however much you reach and wave. It comes in khaki, which is the one I have, and in grey, black, red and white, which I will come back to.

It is light, which surprised me, because it looks cosy enough to be heavy. Light enough to keep on in the house, and still warm enough to sit out on a cold afternoon, which I will get to. It sits nicely between the seasons, when it is too cold for nothing and too early for the big coat.

The cut is relaxed, so it moves when you move and does not pull across the back when you reach for something. It goes over a dress for a do, over good trousers for Sunday lunch, and over my allotment jeans, and it looks like I meant it every time.

There is nothing clever about it. It is simply a wrap that stays on, and I had stopped believing there was such a thing.

What happened at the pub

On a Sunday Brian and I walk Wilf the long way round and end up at the pub for a sit down. They have heaters out in the garden now, and Brian likes to sit outside so Wilf can come too.

I wore the Susan for the first time over a black top and my jeans. A woman on the next bench asked where it was from before I had even sat down. The girl collecting glasses asked on her way past with a stack of them up her arm.

And the third was Mavis from two doors down, who was there with her son and has lived next to us for twenty-two years without once passing comment on anything I have worn. She watched me sit there with both hands round my tea, and said, You look like you have somewhere better to be, Pat.

From Mavis, that is a sonnet.

What I noticed more than the compliments was my hands. I sat there for the best part of an hour with a mug in both of them, and I did not reach for my front once. When I stood up to go, it came with me. Nothing to pick up off the bench, nothing to hitch back on.

I had it on again on the Monday for the allotment, which I would never have dreamt of doing with a wrap. Both hands on the trug, and it did not budge.

Three things I have learned since

One. Take the size you are now. It goes from a UK 8 right up to a UK 20, and the cut is relaxed, so there is no need to go up a size to get a jumper under it. I am a 14 on top and took the 12/14, and it sits on the shoulders the way it should.

Two. It goes over more than you think. I thought it would be for occasions only. It has been over a dress for a christening, over good trousers for Sunday lunch, and over a cream jumper for the allotment, and it looks right with every one. I have not bought a thing to go with it.

Three. You get your hands back. I had not realised how much of every do I spent holding myself together, quite literally. Now I can carry a plate and a glass at the same time, like everybody else.

About the price

I will be straight with you, because I am careful with money and I have already told you as much. The price made me suspicious.

The Susan is £38.95. It was £78.00.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because I once paid more than that for a pashmina I spent a whole wedding holding on.

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 do not trust a perfect score, so I 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 is exactly why I read on. One woman from Upton-upon-Severn had written, “I wore it to my granddaughter’s wedding and danced in it. My daughter said it was the first do she had seen me enjoy without holding my front.”

That was the one that decided it for me.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you were sat across my kitchen table with the kettle on, this is what I would say.

If you have spent years holding your wrap on with one hand, or given up on looking nice and gone back to the fleece, then it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and look.

Not because a wrap will change your life. It will not. But there is something in looking finished and still having both hands free that I had stopped expecting, and I would rather you did not stop expecting it too.

Two practical things. The sale is on at the moment, and the middle sizes are the ones that go first. And the first of the autumn stock is already going, so I would not leave it until the first frost.

Brian took a photograph of me at the pub on Sunday. Both hands round my tea. He said I did not look like I was being sworn in at all.

Pat