Ties

In the street across the road from my third-year Christ Church room, sat a pub called The Bear. It marketed itself as Oxford’s oldest inn – as so many of the city’s hostelries do – but it is most famous for its tie collection. More than 4,500 are on display, enclosed in cases around the walls. The collection began in 1952, when the landlord offered half a pint to anyone who would let him snip off a tie end. To qualify, the ties had to indicate membership of some institution: a club, college, regiment, sports team or school. Over the decades, a cornucopia of colours, stripes and logos has been collected. Inspector Morse once enlisted the landlord’s help in identifying one. The collection is now listed and cannot be altered or added to. I’m rather glad.

Claire Robinson, in (where else?) The Guardian, this week, announced that 'the phallic necktie is an outdated symbol of white male rule in New Zealand's parliament': 'The necktie echoes the shape of the codpiece… designed … to emphasise a European nobleman’s importance through his large phallic size. It is arrow shaped and directs the eye of an onlooker down towards a man’s groin.' Blimey. Newly elected Māori Party co-leader, Rawiri Waititi, meanwhile, refused to wear one in Parliament, referring to it as a 'colonial noose'.  Waititi carried the day. Ties are no longer obligatory law-maker apparel in the happy, Covid-free home of the Bungee Jump and Cloudy Bay. The kind of men who do like to assert alpha status no longer use ties.