Clothes

Many thanks for your comment and sorry not to have replied sooner. From what you say it sounds as if you have some kind of illness which is causing your weight to vary frequently. That must make shopping very difficult, as you are like two people in one, slim or pump depending on the evolution of your illness. Personally, when I put on weight (as I do) I never throw away trousers which have become too tight. I keep them hanging in my wardrobe as an incentive to try to lose weight and be able to wear them again one day. I'm afraid the wardrobe is now full of tight trousers, accumulated over many years of failing to follow a proper diet or do enough exercise. My wife wants me to throw all those old garments away, but I still hang on to them in the hope that one day, well, who knows...? Best Wishes, Robert.

In my opinion, dress-sense is very much an acquired skill, not something we are born with. Having travelled in various parts of the world, I have noticed that colour combinations which might be considered ghastly in Europe or the U.S. can be perfectly acceptable to Asians, Africans, Indians or South Americans. I therefore consider my wife's Spanish good taste to be a product of her upbringing, during which I'm sure she accompanied her mother on many clothes-shopping expeditions and was taught all the traditional Hispanic secrets or codes of dress. Unfortunately she does not agree with me at all on this point, as she believes that Spanish-style good taste (along with Italian and French) is a universal, eternally valid norm which ignorant Brits and North Americans (among others) totally fail to respect. I understand how difficult it must be for you to pass on your own dress-sense to your partner. Most men are not exactly fashion-conscious, David Beckham being the big exception. My wife has tried to teach me some of her little dressing secrets over the years (such as wearing a dark top with light-coloured trousers or vice-versa) but she has failed to noticeably improve my appearance. When I first arrived in Gviedo in the early seventies I wore pink trousers and a purple shirt with little blue flowers all over it, and my Spanish pupils used to look at me as If I had just turned up from another planet. Oviedo was then (and still is today) a rather conservative place, where everyone (except me) dresses in more or less the same way, which I find somewhat unimaginative. Many thanks for your comment and sorry not to have replied a little faster. Best wishes, Robert.