David Charters: The British leg is best hidden from the gaze of strangers

Aug 26 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

A COUPLE of weeks back, I was strolling through the old town in a pair of long, green trousers, wondering whether offices in the thrilling new Britain should be fitted with food-drips dangling from the ceilings, so that the happy workers need never leave their desks.

A government committee could be appointed to iron out the finer details – for example, should the liquefied mince be fed intravenously or sucked by mouth?

While musing on the commercial potential of this idea, my weary eyes were drawn to a notice on the window at the chapel of repose – or body shop, as it was known to my Uncle Hereward, in rare moments of frivolity.

Anyway, the notice was from an assurance company, which wanted to know if I had put aside enough money to pay for my funeral. “Gosh,” I said to myself, “what a good point. I shall check the piggy-bank the moment I’m home.”

A spirited thrush puffed his wee chest and opened his beak as wide as a cathedral to sing over the traffic’s moan, while the sun smiled slowly from behind the sulking clouds. Sing, baby, sing!

With a fresh spring in my step, I began the calculations – one shovel, one hole, one long box, one dark suit, a plate of Spam sandwiches (with a vegetarian option of beetroot), a crate of whisky, 17 jeroboams of fortified wine, ready salted crisps, a ceilidh band and, if the proceedings are going with the expected gusto, the Lonnie Donegan songbook.

By then, I was entering what is rather quaintly called the Parisian quarter of town. I knew I was there when my leading foot made rude contact with an aluminium chair at a table located upwind from swollen bin-bags on the pavement outside a cafe, which was advertising “belly-buster” meals.

“I should have come in my beret, carrying a canvas, an easel and a quiver of brushes to establish the traditional Left Bank look,” I thought – cautiously watching the approach of a dog, who, though possessed of brick-crunching jaws, appeared as a doctor of theology, compared to the pimple-patterned, slavering youth attached to the other end of his lead.

In the distance, I could see my wife and our 12-year-old son, waiting at the spot, where we had agreed to meet for an expedition to buy new clothes for our summer holiday by Lake Garda, in Italy. My wife had, in fact, been adding surreptitiously to her wardrobe for weeks, thinking that I would not hear the increasingly desperate groans of the floorboards on her side of the bedroom.

Her ambition, though, on this morning, was to kit me out in a pair of shorts for our holiday. Have you noticed how many people sport shorts these days, even to work? By inclination, I am a wearer of long trousers, remembering the wise words of my late mother. “In my experience, the British leg is best hidden from the gaze of strangers,” she said, moodily contemplating the arrival of mini-skirts on the streets of Birkenhead.

With hindsight, I now feel that her dislike of legs stemmed from a girlhood in Scotland, where her delicate sensibilities were occasionally ruffled by the sudden emergence from the shadows of kirk elders with whisky on their breath, wearing kilts and reciting from the poems of Rrrrrrrabbie Burrrrrrns.

But we are now considering the English leg – not to be confused with the Welsh leg, which is invariably short, hairy and decorated with the scars left by angry goats.

As a generalisation, we can conclude that when God was sculpting French and Italian legs, he had shape in mind. “Whorrr,” my wife has said, more than once, when watching members of the Italian football team on parade.

But when He turned to the English leg, God was looking for dependability – a stout, no-nonsense, damp-resistant leg, designed for stomping through the malarial swamps of distant lands. Thin legs were no use to us, in case they trembled in times of peril. You couldn’t appear at Agincourt to release arrows at the French, if your knees were all a-wobble.

Our legs were designed for durability, rather than style, though some young women are equipped with splendid pins.

Of late, however, people of all shapes and sizes have been casting caution aside, as can be seen on the escalators in the underground railway stations.

Yet, we mustn’t forget another fine English quality – compromise. I have found long shorts, which reach to mid-knee. I also have a pair of long socks. When worn together, only half an inch of my flesh can be seen. But thinking again about that funeral list – I wouldn’t be seen dead in short shorts.

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