It’s now just one week till we will be leaving and in the mean time we have got most of our questions answered thanks to canalworld.net which I found on the blog of my new pen pal Les.
On the question of “what to wear” we got so many varied answers that it was hard to chose. I noticed one about ski- or sailing clothes being too colourful for the canals and thought “yeah, sure, among all those “subtly coloured” boats, Pål and I will stick out like sore thumbs”! So for those of you who have worried about us “sight polluting” the canals, I can now assure you that a) the rental company supplies us with rainwear (and in the preferred canal colour) and b) we do live in the country, so we can do “country cheek”, besides green is my favourite colour. Actually it seems like my favourite coat will be “the right thing” for the canals.
I bought my favourite coat when I was 25 (31 years ago). It was then and would still be now, the most expensive garment I have ever paid for, yet in the long run it has turned out to be the most economical thing I have ever bought. It is an all weather jacket produced by a famous British company originally bottle green, but by now faded to an even prettier green more like olives. It has never been very fashionable and yet never totally out of fashion for the right weather either. I have worn it every winter for 31 years and some times in the summer also, and not one button is missing, not one seam is broken. My mother has paid me to buy three new coats in this period (and I think that both my mother and the coat are good for a couple of more). As some of you by now have figured out, the coat was actually made before we people of the north started to outsource all the things we were clever at to south east Asia, so the coat spots a label that probably has become a collectors item these days: “Made in Britain”!
My mother thinks that I should soon start to dress “more mature”, and she might have a point since I am pushing 60, and the coat looks a bit worn, I admit to that, so I was sort of thinking of retiring it but I took it on one more trip to Italy last year. A gorgeous and very elegantly dressed young Italian woman came over to me in a bar, looked at the coat and said admiringly: Viiintich! She actually thought I had bought it in a cool second hand shop and told me she was looking for a coat like that herself! The coat now has it’s second spring! If it’s fashionable enough for Italy, I can wear it anywhere! And I bet that some time in the future my grandchildren might argue over who is going to inherit it!
As I have gained weight I once asked my son if I looked fat in it. “No” he answered like a good boy (because I have taught him to answer that to all women if they ever ask him that question), and then a bit more quietly; “but you do look a bit like a green Mummin-mamma”! So if you see somebody on the canals like that: It’s me!
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