My tip for Matadors

Picture the scene. It’s the hottest day of the year so far, and I’m in Birmingham. I’ve just finished rehearsing the Brahms Clarinet Quintet for a concert in a couple of weeks and I suggest that the lovely Sarah and myself go shopping. Being former Brum residents, we go around the new (for us, anyway) Bullring. For those of you who don’t know, the Bullring is essentially Lakeside in London, or BlueWater in Kent with a party-trick – it manages to be three buildings joined seemlessly underground by tunnels lined with shops, terminating in a rather Gherkin-esque Selfridges store.

But I digress. Like any shopping trip with a member of the opposite sex you end up in clothes stores, endlessly being asked your oppinion of clothes you have no opinion on. Your shopping-partner tells you she has something specific in mind, then proceeds to show you at least a dozen items of clothing ranging from stripey socks to evening dresses, with at least two tops which are entirely the wrong size/shape/colour which are cast aside with the comment, ‘I could never wear that with my hips’.

No matter how positive your comments, no matter how much you ty to sell them, you will have to wait whilst half-a-dozen garments are tried on. So today I found myself waiting in the womenswear department of Next. Why is it they always put the lingerie and bikinis by the fitting rooms? They know men are going to have to stand there on their own. It means we have very little options. If we look around us daydreaming, we look like we’re shopping for lingerie for ourselves. If we look towards the fitting rooms we either look like we’re trying to see strangers changing, or we get told off for ‘eyeing-up’ other women. If we look away into the distance we get told off for not paying attention when our beloved comes out to show us what the new item looked like, even though she’s already decided ‘it’s not the right shape’.

So there I was standing in Next with about 6 men, all staring at their shoes, desperately trying to look enthusiastic, positive and attentive, but in a non-creepy, monogamous way. To my left was the man pretending to text – he’d got it very wrong because we knew he was faking it, and frankly looked like he was taking snapshots of the underwear in front of him. Then there was the blue-collar dad, complete with beige trouser shorts – he was asserting his confidence after years of this kind of thing by leaning with one arm stretched out onto the centre of the underwear stand, but undermined by the way he was staring at his brown suede shoes the entire time. There was the ‘new boyfriend’ – he kept telling his other half how great she looked in everything, so keen to look interested he was almost in the changing rooms but who gave his inexperience away by constantly looking around to see what the other men were doing, or fearful they too were passing judgement on her.

However, I was in awe and admiration of the last guy I saw. He was in a league of his own. His own Premier League of clothes-shop-widowers, men left abandoned in unfamiliar territory. I first saw him walking alone into the fitting rooms with a full-length white linen dress. As did every other man. To our collective relief, or perhaps disappointment, he returned immediately with two white skirts only to return a minute later with a similar white skirt and another in green. This guy knew nothing of the clothes-shop inhibitions men have. He strode boldly across the shop floor with a sense of authority, but to many of us it was like he was walking across water. Wakling across water with flames coming out of a layer of hot coals. It’s just not possible. I myself returned my gaze to my shoes.

So here’s my tip for fellow Matadors stepping into Bullrings across the country, nay the world. Try suggesting these as possible browser bookmarks to your other half:

Next
Selfridges
Debenhams
H&M
TheGap