On Buying A Coat

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 209, 25 June 1943, Page 9

On Buying A Coat

"I beg your pardon?" "Sixteen guineas." "Oh" I. said (it takes Courage), "I can’t possibly pay that for a coat." "Of course it’s genuine camel hair," she said very coldly (and it was a very cold day), apparently not even noticing the Courage. But it felt very Genuine. ] have to admit that. "Well actually, the check is rather large for me. But I love the material." "At the end of the week we shall have a smaller check." Well, I thought I would come back to see it. . . I thought maybe I had picked on the wrong shop, so small, with one of. those very exclusive names like Jaqueline written in very small print. You cough before you ask the price and again when you're told it. But it’s so cold I must have a coat. I suppose the trouble is that I’m not a window-gazer, so had no idea that things like 16 guins were in the air. ec S IXTEEN guineas, madam." * ba Ba WAS a bit more cautious at the next shop-oh, a nice coat, but not nearly as warm asthe 16-guins.I had to remove from my unwilling back before I made a far from convincing escape. So I asked the price, and when shé said "Twelve and a-half guineas, you see, it’s camel hair," I simply said coldly, "Genuine?" Well, I had her there. "Oh no! You can’t get genuine camel hair these days," she said, and I realised I had indeed not Kept Abreast. "This ig the mixture-75 per cent camel hair and the rest wool. It’s very warm and very durable." "M’m," I said, in that considering way invented by A. A. Milne for one of his animal friends. And I retired with what might or might not have been the honours, saying I was rather keen on finding a genuine camel hair if I could ... . After that, at various shops I retired with the help of my mother and a friend (either of whom I-would bring back to see it "to-morrow"), the lack of coupons till June 1 (that was quite brilliant), and a general list of dissatis-factions-not quite the thing, a pity the colour is wrong because otherwise. . . . * * * OU know, I am not frightfully emotional, but sometimes I could have wept at the thought of that poor sheep

grazing so innocently on my father’s farm carrying what it foolishly thinks is about five bob’s worth of wool, while my father stoops his ageing back to pull a frosted turnip to keep that five bob’s worth of wool walking about in the bitter wind. . . . And I wondered if he ever wonders why he is a farmer and not a shopkeeper, and why his father was a farmer and not a shopkeeper. . . But then, of course, he has the enduring friendship of the Dumb Beasts. Yes, I could have wept. Besides, I didn’t get a coat. I thought "The first coat that’s not as much as 10 guins, I’ll buy." But when I saw it and felt it, I didn’t. 1 just bought a yard of material in the most violent check I could find and I made two HUGE pockets (all the 16 guin coats had HUGE pockets), and a small collar and HUGE revers, and tacked them on to my old black. and some people would already think I had a new coat... and some wouldn’t. And yesterday I had a letter from my mother in Tierra del Fuego, and she said: "The winds here are bitterly cold, and I have a wonderful coat made of llama skin and lined with rabbit. Oh, it’s so cosy! I wish I could send you one." I wish, too. But I suppose the duty would be about 212 guins.

J.

[NOTE: 1 ought to say that I made up that bit about my mother living in Tierra del Fuego because it looks nice in typewriting. Actually she lives in North Otago.1]