A summer blazer

My father’s school blazer from the 1950s, which I then wore in the 1980s.  

I wore this to my graduation in 1992. As he handed me my degree certificate, the Chancellor asked me, “Rugby or Cricket?”, to which I replied: “What?”  

In our first summer at university, my then-girlfriend and I worked in London, and went to stay with her friend in Fulham. I was wearing this blazer when we arrived; her friend said I looked like a city trader. That night we drove around town in her father’s Mercedes, loaded his garage account with cigarettes and cassettes, and then went to Philip Sallon’s new club.

Getting ready to leave the next morning, I dried my hair in her mother’s bedroom. In the mirror I saw, to my horror, a huge crack in the ceiling, directly beneath the bed that my girlfriend and I had given an enthusiastic going-over a few hours earlier.  

We couldn’t say nothing, so we came cheek-burningly clean, only to be told: “Oh, that’s been there for years...”