What I found was most unsuitable. Scrunched up at the back of the drawer were some sorry looking shorts made from shell suit like material. I’d bought them cheap last year and, over the course of a couple of months, they seemed to slowly disintegrate around the crotch area.
I feel it necessary to add a disclaimer at this juncture to reassure you that I am a very hygienic individual and pay particular care in ensuring that my gentleman’s area is clean and spotless and in no way diseased or rotting.
I put it down to my physical exertions in pursuit of the perfect body. To be fair, I’m still waiting for the perfect body so it looks like I’m going to have to make do with the pale and listless cadaver I’ve been lumbered with but I’ll keep plugging away regardless.
What probably caused my shorts to dissolve was the very fact that they were as cheap as chips. Cheaper in fact. So, there I was, just yesterday, wandering aimlessly around the bewildering world of Sports Direct in search of more sturdy replacements.
The important thing to stress here is that I am a total fish out of water in a sports shop. I maintain an unerring sense that I shouldn’t be there. Give me a Bookshop and I am like the proverbial pig in a pile of its own doings. It’s a more familiar environment where I feel at ease. The sports shop though is much more alien and complicated.
Sports Direct itself is a claustrophobic jumble of clothes and equipment stacked from floor to ceiling, the very epitome of the ‘pile it high and sell it cheap’ philosophy of retail. This in itself is daunting for those who just wander in, casually searching for suitable shorts.
Eventually I settled on three pairs made of adequate materials and all of wildly differing prices. One pair were a fiver and another were £20. I figured that this probably all evened out and in the end I’ve purchased three reasonably priced pairs of shorts.
You might wonder why I didn’t buy three pairs of the same. This is because Sports Direct caters for the broadest range of shapes and sizes imaginable but holds limited stock of what I would call a normal size. You could buy shorts from extra small to 4XL. I’m not sure what type of sports a man in 4XL shorts is doing but the man in the extra small shorts could buy the larger pair for the same price and fashion it into a cape for that added touch of flamboyance on the squash court.
When I eventually reached the till, I realised one pair of shorts did not have a price tag. The cheery girl behind the counter summoned a colleague to climb through the sportswear jungle and find an equivalent pair so that she could relieve me of the appropriate money. Whilst we waited for his return she regaled me with the story of the day someone tried to buy a football which their stock records claimed no knowledge of. “It’s always happening”, she said, “there was one time when our stock take went on to three in the morning”.
Her insights in to the day-to-day running of a large sportswear outlet were cut short by her perspiring colleague returning clutching a similar pair of shorts to those I was attempting to acquire. He pointed out, breathlessly, that she’d have to type the code from the label into the till as they weren’t the same size as the ones I was buying. As soon as his back was turned she looked at me conspiratorially and said, “I have a quicker way” and she just scanned the bar code from the pair of shorts I wasn’t purchasing.
I decided to refrain from pointing out to her that this shortcut may well be the reason that they possess footballs of unknown origin and why their stock takes drag on into the early hours of the morning as by now I felt my business there was concluded.
As for the shorts, one pair has seen action of a sporting nature and so far so good. No dramatic wear and tear to be reported. If the remaining two pairs either melt or catch fire whilst I’m undertaking a squat thrust, I’ll be sure to mention it, albeit from a hospital bed.
