As you read this, I'm sitting in a holiday cottage in Norfolk either feeling smug because I packed a woolly hat and a pair of gloves, or wondering why I didn't bring my flip-flops and the customised sunhat with the beer-can holder attached.
That's not to say I didn't put a lot of consideration into my holiday wardrobe. I did. It's just that the vagaries of the British weather can throw even the most precise sartorial plans into disarray.
Because it's Norfolk I've headed to – home-from-home to the royals when they're in residence at Sandringham and a favourite weekending spot for well-heeled Londoners – I've opted for the city-slicker-on-holiday look. Or the city-slicker-on-holiday look as filtered through the pages of the Boden catalogue I retrieved from the recycling box.
I started planning my holiday wardrobe on January 16. That was the day I took my Barbour in to the Edinburgh Barbour shop and asked them to rewax it. I thought it would make for an appropriately Norfolkian garment.
I was going to rewax the thing myself but after watching a how-to film on the internet – shot by some backwoods hipster in British Colombia, weirdly – I decided that, while the £36 fee was considerably more than I paid for the jacket itself, it was worth trusting the professionals with the job. And boy, were they professional: eight weeks it took, from collar to cuff, and before the Barbour folk even sent it off I had to provide a potted biography and a full service history.
"How old is the jacket?" I was asked.
"I'm not quite sure," I replied. "I inherited it, you see. But I've had it at least 10 years."
That last bit is true, but I made up the rest to sound posh and to add an air of mystery. I actually bought the jacket in a charity shop for £20.
So what else have I packed? A moth-eaten Guernsey sweater. A striped Breton top. The thick white fisherman's socks I bought in the chandlery in Tarbert and, last but not squeezed into the side pocket with the toothpaste and the train tickets and the other things we nearly forgot, a pair of corduroy trousers. Not claret-coloured, though. There are some lines even I won't cross.
I've brought my trackie bottoms, too – there's only so long a fellow can go without home comforts.
I tried on my holiday wardrobe before we left and – to me at least – it screamed country squire heading home to his crumbling Norfolk pile for a glass of burgundy and a rubber of whist. Just the ticket, then.
Mrs Didcock wasn't so sure. "You look," she said, as she shoehorned a 6kg bag of the kids' Lego into an already bulging rucksack, "like a poacher would in a Mike Leigh film. Oh, and don't think you're taking that beer-can sun hat on holiday again."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article