A knitted tie

For twenty years, a moth-eaten scrap of bitter chocolate wool was looped in my wardrobe as an impromptu tie-hanger. When I was 12, I wore it to Trooping the Colour on Horse Guards Parade.

It was brilliant with sunlight that bleached everything but the guards’ scarlet coats - the kind of summer day that is etched into memories of childhood, when you wanted nothing more than to crash to the grass and stare into the sky, while a blackbird sings from the chimney.

In scratchy tweed and tie, I fidgeted on the stand, roasting in the sun. I went to remove my jacket, but my father forbade it: you mustn’t. Now I know that this was a lesson in love; a lesson in belonging - albeit to military uniformity.

Only in the right hands can individuality thrive in that uniformity. One of the 20th century’s great dandies, Bunny Roger - a man who wore rouge into battle - bumped into an astonished London acquaintance while fighting at Monte Cassino.  When asked “Good God, what on earth are you doing here?” he replied, “Shopping."

But me? My commonplace individuality would have been trodden into parade-ground gravel all too quickly. 

Samuel Johnson wrote that “every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier”; but the beat of my heart quickened elsewhere, so I left it to others more dutiful than me. And when the sun shines, I take off my jacket, and listen to the blackbird.