The tie was an extension of your being

Jul 17 2007 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

IN THOSE days of wild parties and shenanigans, when office friends shared flats to make ends meet, the stubbled chins of fuzzy-tongued young men rubbed the dawn, before bedside alarm bells rang in bleary heads like a fusillade of cannons across the land.

Norman stumbled, damp-footed, over the glasses, bottles, plates, shoes and unexpected items of clothing towards the window.

Opening the curtains to a beam of light from what he fears is the Damascus Road, but is actually the shine from the damp slates on the Co-op roof, he declares with Pauline certainty: “Never again”.

Fresh air fills the foetid room and he watches the buses rumble down the road. “Never again,” he repeats, as the throbbing mounts in his head, orchestrated by the fizzes and hisses in his tummy. “Oh God, oh God,” he says to no avail, remembering how his mother would say in the old days: “Don’t look to me for sympathy when your illness is self-inflicted.”

But Stan, more of a realist, rolls from his pit, scratches his chest of dish-cloth coloured flesh and mumbles: “To the next time”.

Then begins the scramble – corn flakes, aspirin, tea, underpants, vests, shaving-brush, foam, razor, thick breath on the mirror; toothbrush, tube, squirt; shirts, trousers, jackets, comb and then the inevitable: “Where are my socks?”

“Under your bed, old chap. I can smell them from here.”

“By the way, have you seen my tie?”

Tie, a missing tie – now there’s a problem. In those days, in the mid-1960s, when I was a cub reporter and millions of men in white-collar jobs awoke after the weekend to something called “the Monday morning feeling”, the tie was an extension of your being.

You could no more report for duty without your tie than an axeman could trot up to the execution-block without his mask or a spaceman set off for Mars without his bubble-helmet.

At the time, I was sharing a flat with a chap called Graham. Our bedroom had patched lino floors and curtains of coffin-brown, halting the light from windows, whose corners were the cemeteries of flies caught in spiders’ webs puffed with age. The electricity meter was in constant need of a coin, so the water was always cold and the kitchen table was decorated with a loaf, the slices from which were leaning from the wrapper, a pot of crusting jam and a slab of butter on a chipped saucer.

But it took us less than 30 minutes, from the sounding of the alarms, to reach the office, about one and a half miles away – provided we caught the bus.

Buses were boarded from the back platform, which was fitted with a chromium pole. So if it was leaving your stop, you had to chase it towards the next one, hoping that it would slow at some point, enabling you to grab the bar and swing in.

“Come on, lads, faster, faster,” the conductor would call, as he watched us puffing through our only exercise of the day.

Such memories were hopping in my mind a few mornings ago when I was sitting in my desk in our modern office.

Suddenly I heard a cheery “Good morning” and looked up to see David Cameron, leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition, staring at me with a toothpaste advertisement of a smile. Instinctively, I felt for my tie. Thank God it was there and tied with a Windsor knot as well.

“Hello,” I replied, calculating that he would not want to be regaled with a spirited “What about the workers?” or “Save the planet”.

“How are you?” he said, as his personal assistant panted behind him. “Fine,” I said. “How are you?”

“Very well,” he said. Those were very probably the last words we’ll ever exchange. With that, he continued his visit to our office, where he gave interviews, having the previous evening addressed the CBI dinner at St George’s Hall.

I did notice that he was wearing a tie. But on other occasions I have seen him parading in a defiantly tieless fashion. These days, the tie is to a politician what a G-string is to a stripper – a mobile garment used to tease the public.

Some years ago, I wrote that the tie was no longer favoured by thrusting young business executives. The trend has spread. Fewer than half the male office workers in this country now wear ties.

Even the TV presenters Jeremy Paxman and Jon Snow have said the days of the tie are over. Far from being up to the minute and ready for action, the tie-wearer is now seen as a relic. I still wear a tie.

LISTEN to David Charters on his picture podcast, at www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk