Pink

I did a double take on my way into work this morning. As I approached the casino, heading over the bridge that takes me on my familiar route, a Transit van careered round the corner at a speed I didn’t think vans could reach without B.A. Baracus behind the wheel. I stepped back from the edge of the kerb and let it go past, and the second thing I noticed about it was that it was owned by some food wholesalers. That's what it said on the side, anyway. It could have just said they sourced organic ingredients, or were an ingredient specialist, or provided a wide range of ingredient based solutions. Whichever way you cut it they were still greengrocers, as sure as the word "Manager" in my job title doesn't mean anything either.

The first thing I noticed about the van, though, was that it was pink. A strange shade of pink, too, an inbetween, nothingy pink, more muted than shocking and livelier than salmon, a perfect slightly pink cuboid of not very butch greengrocery. I wasn’t sure if the cathode ray in my head was starting to degenerate, or if the world was like one of those monitors that should have been thrown out years ago, or if it was just pink after all. It was the only pink Transit van I had ever laid eyes on.

Who drives a van like that? Someone with no money to buy anything better, obviously. We’ve all seen vehicles in a colour nobody in their right mind would choose; the cheap looking mustard Ford that slouches towards the traffic lights as if embarrassed, the baleful purple colour previously only seen in navel fluff, the white that started out bright and ended up shite. They are always second-hand and always driven by someone cursing the taste of the idiot who bought it from new. Their red face is also a colour few people deliberately opt for.

But what if the colour of this van was deliberate, I thought. Far-fetched I know, but appealing none the less. The more I considered it the more I liked the idea of a new demographic, the pink van man. The Guardian, or better still, the Financial Times folded up on the dashboard. A bumper sticker saying "Honk for Proportional Representation". Regular phone ins (on a Pinktooth headset, naturally) to Radio 4 to put the case for a bold new Marxist interpretation of Beowulf. Booze cruises to the Dordogne or regular outings with your fellow drivers to Festival Hall for the latest season of European monochrome melancholia. And more rosé than you could shake a packet of Hubba Bubba at.

Put that way, if I could drive I might have wanted to be one. After all, I’ve always rather liked pink myself.

* * *

My first pink shirt, appropriately enough, was bought from Thomas Pink. Not the gorgeous shop on Jermyn Street, that would come later when I had more money, but from the not so salubrious outlet in "Swindon Designer Village". You may not have been to Swindon but take it from me, only a third of that description is true. It’s in Swindon, but Swindon is the kind of town where most people’s idea of a fashion designer is Dorothy Perkins, and villages are only supposed to have one idiot.

All that aside, I loved it. It was bright salmon, in a beautiful herringbone, and I didn’t even mind some of the mocking I got at work. "Real men wear pink" I told my colleagues.

"Yeah, right. And while we're on the subject, I still say that’s a handbag." replied my colleague Glenn.

"It’s a manbag Glenn. Trust me, one day everyone will have one. It’s from Zara." I retorted. I obviously hadn’t judged my audience very well - always an issue for me - because Glenn probably didn’t even know what Zara was. His regular uniform on Fridays was a pair of faded jeans and a plain white t-shirt of questionable vintage. Telling him, though, was a mistake because later that day he turned to me.

"If it’s a manbag, how come it’s on the women’s section of the Zara website?"

"Oh shut up."

The pink shirt worked superbly until the day I got sunstroke. Kelly and I had been visiting our friends Nick and Marilyn up in Derby, a trip which was even more exciting than usual because Marilyn had a boat. "It’s where I escape to when he gets too much. I just leave him alone with his porn and enjoy my own company." she told us. And I learned loads of things in our weekend on the river that I’d never known. I learned that no bacon sandwich tastes finer than one cooked on a stove on a boat where the bacon is popped onto a hot frying pan and straight into cheap white bread the moment it is ready, the boat rocking gently as if urging the bacon to hurry up and cook. I learned that getting drunk, listening to The White Album on a cheap cassette player and playing cards past midnight can make you wonder why people bother with television. And I also learned that when a boat zips along at quite a speed and the sun bounces off the water you can quite forget that you are burning and getting sunstroke.

By the time we got home on the train I was woozy and delirious. I got into a cold bath and I could almost see the steam rising off my sizzling body. The next day I had to chair a meeting with some quite important people, and I could barely understand what I was saying. It was as if I had booked the only meeting room in the whole building filled with jelly. I couldn’t remember anything anyone had said seconds after it was out of their mouths. The next day, when my fever had subsided, I looked at the notes I had scribbled on my A4 pad and I could only make out about one word in ten.

But none of that was the worst thing. Too dazed and sickly to put any washing on, I had to wear the only shirt I had clean, the salmon shirt. It so perfectly matched my burned face, neck and hands that I looked like I had turned up to work topless with a fetching herringbone texture all across my naked torso. How anybody in that room ever took me seriously again I will never know, but the shirt never felt the same after that.

* * *

My latest pink shirt is a gorgeous Prince Of Wales check and I picked it up in the sales earlier in the month. It’s the subtlest pink I’ve ever worn and I love it. One of the PAs makes a point of stopping by my desk nowadays.

"Where's your floral shirt?"

"Oh, it’s in the wash. Why, did you like it?"

"I loved it! It’s so nice to see someone in here wearing something with character."

I wonder if she says that to the effortlessly dapper black guy we sometimes see in the canteen, beautifully cut suits, grey wire wool hair, huge but classy spectacle frames and a bow tie every day. Iain and I aspire to dress like that. The fact that we’re too scared to is the only thing that’s stopping us.

"Well I’m wearing a pink shirt today. And there are flowers on my tie. Will that do?"

"Yes, but let me know when you’re wearing the floral shirt again."

I smile. I believe it’s also known as twinkling in this context.

"I will."

Manga Dave turns to me in despair. "Honestly mate, you’re such a sleaze sometimes."

Later on in the kitchen I am trying to drum up enthusiasm for my pink shirt. There isn’t a lot, but it brings out one of our favourite anecdotes as Phil turns to Iain and asks, all innocent face, "Do you still have your pink jeans?"

Iain does that cross face which always comes out when he knows we are about to rib him about something. I knew this story about Iain before I knew Iain well – it was legendary across all our offices, from Reading to Leeds: Iain was the man with the pink jeans. We used to have a company bulletin board and Iain’s pink jeans were one of the regular topics of discussion, along with people advertising rooms for let or trying to flog the latest batch of 200 Marlboro Lights they had brought back with them from a holiday they wished they were still on.

"They were not pink! They were…"

"…stonewashed red, I know." I say, cutting in and saving him the bother. "At least that’s what you say. I saw them once and they looked pink to me. Maybe the real name of the colour was something like 'distressed coral' or 'rouge femme'."

"Honestly. I’ve been through this a hundred times. They weren’t pink, I don’t have them any more and I took them to the charity shop." Iain sounds more exasperated than he really is as he rattles through that familiar speech, the closest you‘ll ever come to watching somebody talking in bullet points. I think he quite likes the attention but he plays up his frustration because it‘s what's expected. We all know the rules we adhere to in a conversation like this.

"Do you still have your big polo shirt with 'Mount Gay' all over it in big letters?" says Phil.

"Ye-es." says Iain impatiently. The tone, unspokenly, says come on then, let’s hear the punchline.

"Did you ever wear it with your pink jeans?"

"I think the verb is 'team' in this context Phil. We're talking about fashion."

"No I didn’t!"

"Did Alison ever see you in your pink jeans?" I ask. "I suppose we know the answer to that, because you're married."

"Very funny."

Of course, we already knew Iain still had his Mount Gay polo shirt, because Iain has been the same clothes size since he was 18. He comes in on casual dress Fridays wearing old university sailing club tops. Old money, you see; he never throws anything away. If his clothes were people, it would be legal to shag them, that’s how old they are. It’s a luxury I will never know - even if I could still fit into the clothes I wore at university, if I tried to wear them in public you would be justified in having me taken to a secure facility where I would be changed into an altogether less forgiving (but probably more stylish) outfit.

We take our cups of tea and head for the double doors, back to our to do lists on paper and our to don‘t lists in our heads. Something I had on my to don’t list jumps, unbidden, into my mouth, something I hadn’t intended to say.

"Iain, you would tell me if you ever found this irritating, wouldn’t you? I’d try to change if you did. I’d fail, but I would try."

Sadly, I know that is true. I would be tickled pink if he does, too.