Wednesday, March 04, 2009

AN UNFORESEEN PROBLEM


When Derek so kindly offered to lend Thomas his beautiful Buchanan tartan outfit in its entirety there was one wee problem we missed. Thomas is probably an inch taller, so we knew that wasn't significant. Derek's neck is half a size wider, again no problem there. Waist and chest sizes look similar too. The obvious difference that none of us overlooked were the feet. Derek has the smallest feet I ever encountered in a reasonably tall man - 7ish (41ish) I believe. Thomas is a typical 9 (43). We knew this so Thomas hired some brogues in town for the afternoon. Problem solved...! Or so we thought. What none of us had worked out till half an hour before the ceremony was that kilt socks aren't cotton and lycra blends to fit size 6-10 like normal blokey socks, but are wool... unstretchable one-size wool. That made Derek's socks 2 sizes too small and therefore 3 inches too short. With the heel in his instep Thomas had the additional problem of them constantly falling down! OOPs. Poor Thomas was paranoid about them all afternoon, and now we're desperately hoping he hasn't stretched them beyond future use by Derek too. Though in the scheme of things a wee socky problem is fairly minor.

1 comment:

The Scudder said...

Why didn't he just use the Skean-Dhu ( or Sgian-dubh if you prefer the original Gaelic Black knife )to cut the toes out of the socks ?
Later, when Derek went to use them again he could have blamed Mice!( or Gordy ?? )