Who the hell invented the tie (necktie to American cousins)? I remember when I was training to be a teacher in Bonny Scotland, about to begin my first teaching practice at St Mungo's Academy, Alloa. The night before, I had to practise putting a tie round my neck for the first time. It was a khaki coloured woollen tie that my father had kindly lent me. Then, as now, the tie is considered de rigeur for male teachers in the United Kingdom. Women can get away with lots of things - T-shirts, cheesecloth blouses, smart denim jeans but for male teachers the expectation is that every morning of our working lives we'll put our necks in a noose.
I have had to don a tie so many times that it's now second nature to me - I could tie one in my sleep. Over the years I have accumulated a big collection of ties. Unfortunately, some have food or toothpaste stains on them and one or two have been irrevocably damaged by snagging on car seatbelts. I have learnt that washing or dry cleaning ties never really works out - sometimes it's to do with the inner wadding but no matter how carefully you clean a tie, it never ends up right.
As I was on the subject of ties I decided to nip upstairs to arrange a small sample of my ties over a wardrobe door. There's my TFNS (Thank You For Not Smoking) tie which I wear every year on National No Smoking Day, there's the zigzag military zie my father gave me before he died, a palm tree tie I bought at the Walmart in Panama City FL,Christmas and birthday ties from my lovely children - Ian and Frances, a gaudy Picasso silk tie my mother bought for me in Hong Kong. The wardrobe conceals a further sixty of the damned things. I swear that if I make it to retirement I'm going to make a bonfire of them - not because I don't like ties but I dislike the pettiness that they represent in my profession - as if being a good teacher had anything at all to do with the way you look.
I have had to don a tie so many times that it's now second nature to me - I could tie one in my sleep. Over the years I have accumulated a big collection of ties. Unfortunately, some have food or toothpaste stains on them and one or two have been irrevocably damaged by snagging on car seatbelts. I have learnt that washing or dry cleaning ties never really works out - sometimes it's to do with the inner wadding but no matter how carefully you clean a tie, it never ends up right.
As I was on the subject of ties I decided to nip upstairs to arrange a small sample of my ties over a wardrobe door. There's my TFNS (Thank You For Not Smoking) tie which I wear every year on National No Smoking Day, there's the zigzag military zie my father gave me before he died, a palm tree tie I bought at the Walmart in Panama City FL,Christmas and birthday ties from my lovely children - Ian and Frances, a gaudy Picasso silk tie my mother bought for me in Hong Kong. The wardrobe conceals a further sixty of the damned things. I swear that if I make it to retirement I'm going to make a bonfire of them - not because I don't like ties but I dislike the pettiness that they represent in my profession - as if being a good teacher had anything at all to do with the way you look.As time has passed, I admit that I have enlarged. I am not obese by any means but with each slight enlargement my neck has grown accordingly. There's nothing worse than going to your wardrobe to grab a clean shirt only to find that it has "shrunk" and the top button just won't meet the hole like it used to. Finally you manage it, with blood pumping around this fabric neck shackle and you are able to knot your tie, spending the rest of the day looking like a beetroot and speaking like you've just inhaled helium. Menstruation? Childbirth? Such matters are as nothing when compared with the dress code issues that western men face each day!
Details from tie collection
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