A letter from a reader

At 68, I found my husband in the same grey fleece in every photograph on my phone

The last thing I wrote that anybody else was meant to read was a note for the milkman, and that was a good many years ago. I am not a writer, and I have never once thought it my place to tell another woman what to wear, never mind what to put on her husband.

But three different women asked me about Brian’s polo at the cricket club’s end-of-season supper on Saturday, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it down properly.

Brian is 70. He kept wicket for that club for twenty years and he still does the scorebook. And for six years he has worn the same grey zip fleece to everything. The allotment, the club, the doctor’s, our granddaughter’s school play, his brother’s seventieth. It went bobbly at the cuffs in the second year, and the zip has had to be coaxed since the fourth.

I did not notice, the way you stop noticing the wallpaper. It was our daughter who noticed. She was going through the photographs on my phone to find one for his birthday card, and she scrolled, and scrolled, and then turned the phone round to show me.

Mum, Dad is wearing that fleece in every single one.

She was right. Christmas, the caravan, the christening, the day the new greenhouse went up. The same grey fleece, zipped to the chin, in every one of them. In some you could hardly tell which year it was.

I will not pretend Brian chose that. Nobody sets out to look the same in every photograph for six years. It creeps up on you one cold morning at a time, and the fleece is always there on the hook by the door.

How it happens

Brian was never a scruff. When we were courting he had a navy blazer with brass buttons that he wore to the dances, and he polished his shoes on a Friday night whether we were going anywhere or not.

What changed was not him. It was the shops, and I think a lot of you will know exactly what I mean.

Go into any shop and look at what they sell for men his age. On one side there are V-neck pullovers for men who play golf, in colours Brian would not be seen dead in. On the other there are fleeces, and more fleeces, in grey, in navy, and in a brown nobody has ever wanted. There is nothing in between for a man who would like to look dressed but would sooner walk home than wear a tie to a cricket supper.

So he did what men of that generation do. He picked the one that zipped up and kept him warm, and he stopped looking.

What I had wrong

Here is the bit I got most wrong.

I thought Brian did not care. Every pullover I had bought him since the children were small had gone into a drawer and stayed there, and I had taken that to mean he would rather be comfortable than smart.

It turns out that was never it.

The pullovers I bought him were the trouble. They were thick and heavy and he was too hot in them before the soup came. Or they had a round neck and he said he felt like he had come out in his vest. The fleece won every time because it was the only thing that did not bother him.

What he wanted, though he would never have put it like this, was something with a collar so he looked dressed, soft and warm without cooking him, that he could pull on over his head without a second thought. Smart or comfortable. It had never occurred to me he could have both, and it took me until 68 to go and look.

The polo is called the James

It is from Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique I have bought my own things from for a while now. I had no idea they did anything for men until I was looking for something else entirely and there it was.

It is called the James. A navy long sleeve polo with a little square waffle texture all over it, so it has something about it without shouting. It has a proper collar in a soft tan check, and three white buttons at the neck with the same check running down beside them. It comes in grey, black, white and an olive green as well, which I will come back to.

The texture is soft, which was the first thing he said when he put it on, before he said a word about how it looked. It keeps him warm without him overheating by the pudding. It has been through the wash four times now and kept its shape and its colour, which is more than I can say for the fleece. And it goes with his jeans, his good grey trousers and the cords he wears to the allotment, so there is no new outfit to buy to go with it.

There is nothing clever about it. It is a polo that looks like it was made for a grown man who still likes to look nice.

What happened at the cricket club supper

He wore it for the first time to the end-of-season supper at the club, with his good grey trousers and the brown shoes he still polishes on a Friday.

Three women asked me where it was from before the hotpot had come round. Three. One of them was Hilary, who has done the teas at that club for thirty years and has never once passed comment on anything but the sandwiches.

She said Brian looked like a man with somewhere to be afterwards. From Hilary, that is a speech.

What I noticed more than the compliments, though, was that he did not spend the evening tugging at a zip or running a finger round his collar. He stood at the bar talking about the season for two hours and never once said he was too hot.

He had it on again the next morning to take Wilf round the park, and on the Monday for the allotment. That is the rarest sort of thing to buy a husband. The one he wears to the club supper on the Saturday and to dig potatoes on the Monday, and looks like himself in both.

Three things I have learned since

One. Go by his chest, not his usual size. The sizes are given as chest measurements in inches, from a small at 36 to 38 up to a 3XL at 46 to 48. Brian is a 42 round the chest, so he is the XL. Get the tape measure round him while he is watching the television. He will not notice.

Two. It does not need anything with it. The collar is already there, so there is no shirt underneath, no tie, no scarf. He pulls it on and he is dressed. For a man who hates a fuss, that is the whole appeal.

Three. He will pretend it was his idea. By the Wednesday Brian was telling our son-in-law he had been meaning to get himself something like it for years. I let him.

About the price

I will be straight with you, because I am careful with money and I will not pretend otherwise. The price made me suspicious.

The James is £30.95. It was £62.00.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because Brian paid more than that for the fleece, and look where that got us.

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 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 Middleton-in-Teesdale had written, “My husband lives in it now. I had to buy him the grey so I could get the navy in the wash.”

Then I ordered him the olive as well, for the allotment.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were stood at the allotment gate with a flask between us, this is what I would say.

If you have a husband who has worn the same fleece to everything for longer than either of you would like to admit, and who tells you every birthday that he does not need anything, then it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and look.

Not because a polo will change his life. It will not. But there is something in seeing him look like himself again in a photograph 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, which I found out because the XL in olive had gone by the time I went back 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.

The fleece lives in the shed now. He has not asked after it once.

Pat