A letter from a reader

At 67, I had owned exactly two coats for forty years, one for funerals and one for the compost heap

I have kept the same little notebook in my handbag for thirty years, for bus times and birthdays and what the vet said, and not one page of it runs to more than a line. I am not a writer, and I have never thought it was my business to tell another woman what she ought to wear.

But three different women asked me about my jacket in the tea room at the little heritage railway on its autumn steam weekend, with the grandchildren's noses pressed to the window, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it down properly.

It started on my own doorstep. Every autumn steam weekend our daughter and I take the grandchildren on the old line up in the hills, out to the end of the line and back again. She came to fetch me at eight, with the two of them already in their wellies in the back of the car, took one look at me in the hall, and said it.

Mum, we are going on a steam train, not to a funeral.

She was right, and I knew it before she had finished the sentence. There were two coats on the pegs in my hall. The long black one with the good buttons, for church and funerals and anything with a car park, and an old fleece with a hole in one elbow that I bought for the garden. Forty years, near enough, and I had never owned a third.

I did not choose that. That is the part I want to be clear about. Nobody decides to own one coat for funerals and one coat for the compost and nothing at all for the days in between. It happens one sensible coat at a time, until your daughter says it out loud on your own doorstep with the engine running.

How it happens

I was not always like this. When our daughter was small I had a red duffel coat that went to every school gate and every bonfire for six years, and I only gave it up when the toggles went.

What changed was not me. It was what the shops seem to think our days look like.

Go and look. On one side, the good coats, long and dark and heavy, cut for standing still at a graveside or walking from the car to a restaurant. On the other, the practical things, fleeces and anoraks in the colours of mud, for people who are about to dig something. As if a woman of our age only ever goes to a funeral or into the garden.

Nobody seems to have noticed that most of our days are neither. They are a morning at the park, a walk to the café, a train ride with two small people who want to see the engine. Days where you need to crouch down and stand back up again, and still look like somebody's grandmother rather than somebody's gardener.

What I had wrong

Here is the bit I got most wrong, and I think a lot of us have.

I thought the in-between days did not count. I thought you saved the nice things for the occasions, and anything else would do, and nobody would notice either way.

It turns out the in-between days are most of them.

I had been choosing between smart and sensible for so long that I had forgotten there was supposed to be a third thing. Something warm that does not weigh you down, that lets you bend and reach and lift a child onto a bench, and that still looks like you chose it on purpose.

That is all I had been missing. It took me until 67 and a steam train to work it out.

The jacket is called the Emily

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 Emily. A soft jacket in a grey and white check with a fine line of tan running through it, a hood, and a row of little black buttons down the front. You can button it up, but mostly I wear it open over a roll neck, which is how it looks best. They do it in red, green, black and brown as well, and a more colourful check, which I will come back to.

It is properly warm, which I did expect, and it is light, which I did not. I have spent years in coats that kept the cold out by sheer weight, so that by lunchtime my shoulders felt as though I had been carrying the shopping. This one you forget about.

It is soft, and it moves when you move, so reaching up to a luggage rack or down to a small boy's zip is no trouble at all. And it looks just as right over my good trousers as it does over the ones I walk the dog in. It is not a complicated jacket. It is simply the one that was missing from my hall.

What happened at the steam railway

We go up on the first train, ride out to the end of the line, and while the engine is turned round for the journey back we have a pot of tea in the little tea room on the platform, with its steamed-up windows and its one radiator that never quite keeps up.

I wore the Emily for the first time. Three women asked me about it before the kettle had boiled. A grandmother from Prestbury with twins in matching bobble hats, a young mum at the next table, and Phyllis, who has poured the tea in that tea room every steam weekend for as long as I have been taking the grandchildren, and has never said a word to me beyond milk and sugar.

She put my cup down, looked me up and down, and said I looked like I had come on an outing instead of come to help. From Phyllis, that is a first-class ticket.

What I noticed more than the asking, though, was that I did not think about what I had on once. I knelt on the platform to do up a coat. I lifted my granddaughter onto the bench to watch the engine go round. I sat in the warm with my tea and did not take it off, or wish I had brought something else, or feel I ought to apologise for it.

The next morning I put it straight back on to walk the dog round the lanes, and felt completely myself in it. It went on a steam train with the grandchildren one day and out with the labrador the next, and it was right for both. I cannot remember the last time I could say that about anything on my pegs.

Three things I have learned since

One. Warm does not have to mean heavy. I had always assumed that a jacket which kept the cold out on a windy platform would feel like wearing a rug. This one keeps me comfortable on a chilly morning and still lets me sit in a warm tea room without feeling cooked.

Two. Wear it open. Over a plain roll neck with the hood down, it looks as though you have dressed rather than wrapped up. When the wind comes across the platform, do up the buttons and that is that.

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 jumper underneath without it looking like a tent.

About the price

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

The Emily is £34.95. It was £70.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch, because I have paid more than that for a fleece that had gone bobbly by Christmas.

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 Disley had written, “Warm enough for the school run on a cold morning and smart enough that I kept it on for lunch afterwards. I have bought the green one for my sister.”

Then I ordered the green one as well, for my sister June, who has a long black coat of her own.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sat in that tea room with a pot between us while the engine took on water, this is what I would say.

If you have one coat for best and one coat for the garden, and you have been going out in one or the other on all the days that are neither, 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 walking out of your own front door with the grandchildren and feeling dressed for the day you are actually having, 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 are the ones that go first, which I found out because the 12/14 in green had gone by the time 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.

The black coat waits in the wardrobe now for the days that really need it. The rest of the days are mine.

Maggie