I hate getting dressed up. Watching the Met Gala red carpet makes my legs go all itchy. As a child, getting dressed up entailed putting on trousers which had wool in them. And wool made me itch like hell. They’d be the same trousers I’d been forced into the last time I’d been dragged off, in an ecstasy of discomfort, to the wedding of a distant cousin. Alterations would be necessary. I’d stand there while my mum faffed away with pins, ignoring my wails of protest. They are PICKY, I would bleat. Even thinking about wool makes me itch like hell. Wool is my hell. In Room 101, all they’d have to do is put me in a tight-fitting, 100% wool boilersuit and their work would be done.
Eventually, perhaps embarrassed by a child behaving as if he had fleas, action was taken. Silk linings were sewn into the cursed, itchy, picky, scratchy trousers to shield my little legs from the misery. This helped, but only up to a point. Merely knowing the wool was there made me itch. This Little Lord Fauntleroy, covertly clad in silk, would still move gingerly, aching for the moment he could take the bloody things off.
