Bend It Like
Beckham
‘You can’t go out
looking like that,’ said Mavis.
‘Why not?’ said
George, ‘we’re only going to the shops.’
‘You look like a tramp
who’s been sleeping in the park all night,’
Mavis replied. ‘You haven’t shaved;
your hair is untidy; your jacket doesn’t go
with those trousers and, anyway, those are your
gardening trousers – there’s a rip in
them where you caught them on that nail.’
George decided not to argue.
It seemed important to his wife that he met a
certain sartorial standard when they went out
together, so he went off to change into something
more in keeping with her concept of modern
fashion.
An hour later, George and
Mavis were walking through the shopping mall.
Suddenly, George stopped in
his tracks and stared upwards at an enormous
poster of David Beckham that dominated the window
of one of the shops. The football star was
sporting the very latest clothes to encourage the
fashion-conscious to buy.
‘What are you looking
at?’ asked Mavis.
George pointed to the
picture of the celebrity. George was twenty years
older than David Beckham and no one would have
mistaken the facial features of one for the other.
However, the scruffy appearance of the hair; the
day or two of stubble on his chin; the jacket and
the torn trousers were exactly the same as those
that George had earlier modelled.
Mavis had to admit that the
coincidental similarity was remarkable.
It was a week later when
George came in from the garden to join Mavis for
another expedition to the mall. He was, once
again, but this time proudly, exhibiting a
dishevelled hair style; designer stubble and his
Beckhamesque jacket and trousers. He was even
contemplating buying a bottle of Eau de Beckham
in the mall to add a final olfactory touch to the
ensemble.
‘You can’t go out
looking like that,’ said Mavis.
‘Why not?’ George
replied. ‘We’ll pass through the mall
again, and I want to make sure that I’m
right up-to-date on the fashion front.’
‘Dressing like David
Beckham doesn’t suit a man of your age,’
said Mavis. ‘It’s like me dressing like
Jessie J.’
George glanced at himself
in the mirror and sighed. ‘That’s a
good point,’ he said. ‘And once I start
dressing at the cutting edge of fashion,
there’ll be constant pressure to always be
trend-setting. This month it’s my gardening
clothes. Next month it might be my oily overalls.
The month after that it could be all that stuff
that doesn’t fit me that I haven’t worn
since the 1980s. Where would it all end?’
George shook his head. ‘Soon, the paparazzi
would follow me everywhere I went, trying to get
photographs. I couldn’t stand the stress.’
George winked at Mavis and
smiled. He then went off to shave and change into
something less in keeping with her
concept of modern fashion.
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