I have no wish to sound like a worn and bitter hack, sand-blasted by weltschmerz, but I don’t have many ambitions left. It’s not like I want to write the Great Western Novel. AI can do that and who the hell reads any more? And I worry about ‘bucket lists’. They always seem remarkably similar. Ridiculous self-imposed sporting targets like marathons; the health-and-safety sanitised absurdity of ‘adrenaline’ experiences; pathologically unimaginative travel. I blame advertising for this. Indiscriminate 30-second reels of yoga/skydiving/surfing/beaches/hiking/street food in Thailand/stargazing in Machu bloody Picchu. God we’ve become dull. Even our ‘wildest dreams’ are commoditised and fully predictable.
I think I only ever declared one ambition publicly, around the time I graduated. I was to die as spectacularly as possible. Specifically, being smashed on top-grade narcotics, driving a GT40 through the safety barrier of the Great St Bernard Pass and plummeting to a fiery doom while distracted by a young Angie Dickinson in the passenger seat. I’ve maintained that as an ambition – though the parts are no longer available.
The only other thing I’m determined to achieve before my glorious end is, on the face of it, much simpler, yet practically even less likely. I want to wear a white shirt to dinner. I’m not talking about going to a black-tie event, where you flop the old soup-and-fish out of its bag, still redolent of wee and kippers from the last rout, and slip on the crisp, clean Marcellised dickie before hopping in a cab. That’s easy.
No, what I’m aiming for is that thing that Hollywood leading men have always pulled off so brilliantly. Standing on the red carpet in a dark suit. Regular white shirt open at the tanned neckline, collar tips tucked just inside the jacket so it doesn’t look like you’re showing off. But still enough flair to hint at a collarbone and understated musculature. Clooney does it to devastating effect. (Note to British celebrities: you look ridiculous if your teeth are whiter than your shirt.)
I have the shirts. A few treasured Brooks Brothers in their sharp-as-a-tack, high-thread-count Egyptian cotton. At least two collar styles. Some classics for the ‘I’ve just slipped my Sulka off’ look. Maybe a couple of subtle, but still possibly regrettable ‘cutaways’ for that Rat Pack vibe. They’re in the wardrobe. Pristine. Pressed. Ready to go every morning.
I’ve tried. God knows, I’ve tried. But they never get through to the evening. The first risk period is breakfast. I’ve rendered a shirt useless with splashback from the coffee pot within 22 seconds of donning it. Because I live in Cambridge, I must travel to get anywhere. Travel requires carrying things. Bags with straps. Things that press the shape out of shoulders. Anything bulkier than a credit card and a mobile and suddenly your body betrays you with its own moisture. A calm seven-minute saunter to the station and you might have hope. Anything more hurried and you are slowly but surely degrading the shirt from the inside.
I’m pretty sure that there is a gravitational pull between crisp, pressed cotton and chilli-spiked oil
If, hypothetically, I could get off the train with shirt intact, there would be lunch. White shirts have been part of a gentleman’s dress for centuries, but it’s only in maybe the past few decades that informal eating has made them impractical. Think for a moment of any historical images of a man at lunch. Every-one from Beau Brummell to JFK. Always seated, always with knives and forks. I’m not complaining, but lunch in a big city today will come from an entirely unprecedented palette of ethnicities, with dozens of traditions for consumption. A white shirt can’t even survive a bowl of spaghetti at a table with napkins, let alone a hand-thrown bowl of fire-cooked Thai ‘Jungle’ curry, shovelled with sticks while perched at a bar and jostled by plaid-clad elbows. Pristine linens and ramen slurping cannot co-exist, and the very definition of ‘street’ food is that you should be able to eat it with fingers and standing up. Though physics has yet to entirely catch up with my thinking, I’m pretty sure that there is a gravitational pull between crisp, pressed cotton and chilli-spiked oil.
The more you think about it, the more absurd my ambition is. I want to be that guy slipping onto the bar stool at six, ordering a martini, and clocking just the faintest admiring glance for looking properly turned out, considered, put together. But it can never be. All that stuff about time’s arrow, and ‘you can’t unmake an omelette’. I’ve had bitterly to accept that until Elon invents the time machine – so I can step away from my wardrobe and slide onto the bar stool, bypassing the intervening seven hours – then time and entropy will always destroy the shirt.
Tim Hayward’s The Cocktail Hour: a Drinker’s Companion is out now.
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