Profound thought for the Task
Love is a state of Being. Your love is not outside, it is deep within you, and it cannot leave you. It is not dependent on some other body, some external form.
– Eckhart Tolle
The Task: Dress-up as a businessman and go to the local pub pretending to work
It’s been a few years since I was a businessman (maybe 18 !), and so my businessman outfits are no longer in my wardrobe. I’ve got a suit but that is light grey for weddings and also two sizes too big for me now. For the last wedding I bought a darkish jacket to accompany a white T shirt, denims and trainers Very trendy (probably not) at the time but not very businessman-y. Anyway I do have a pair of black chinos so I thought I could wear these with the blackish jacket that I also have, and a shirt that is unfashionable but can be hidden under the jacket. I don’t think businessmen wear ties anymore so I didn’t have to go through that hell, but I found some old cufflinks which fitted the brief I think.
I waxed my hair and pushed it back to make it look more greasy than an estate agent. I found my funeral shoes – dusted them off and they looked good as new. I decided not to wear glasses as I had imagined that I’d had my eyes lasered, but I did wear sunglasses even though it was a cloudy day. My old briefcase would have worked nicely for a 1990’s businessman but reckon today’s lot use man bags and trendy man-bags instead. So I got my small rucksack and put my laptop in and I found a nice belt for my chinos, tucked a proper pen inside my jacket, and found a watch to wear (which wasn’t an Apple-watch but who’d know from a distance!).
It felt strange being adorned like that. I was a bit nervous walking down the street in case anyone spotted me. I decided to walk to the Rose and Crown pub, which is a decidedly non businessman pub as these days it prefers the footy and Reform crowd. But it was only 3:30 so I thought I could go in there and sit anonymously while pretending to do important work on my laptop. At first I thought everyone was staring at me perhaps because they thought I’d walked into the wrong bar or perhaps because my jacket didn’t quite match my trousers. I toyed with the idea of buying a drink that a businessman would have (a large gin&tonic ?), but when I was a businessman I used to drink beer. Let’s have a good old pint of Harvey’s.
So there I sat in the bar dressed to impress – laptop open and doing business. Actually I had real computer work to do so it was quite a useful hour or so. Nobody said anything – nobody commented and I didn’t get any strange looks. I noticed at one point another older bloke wandered up to the bar and ordered. His suit looked a bit out of place as well, and I wondered whether his wife had set him a similar challenge. We could start a club!
In the end I felt kind of comfortable being a businessman in the pub once more. I walked home with my head held high and proud of doing my challenge. It’s nice to get back in the jeans and T shirt though!
Your Local is a state of Being. Your Local is not outside, it is deep within you, and you cannot leave it. It is not dependent on how you dress, or some external businessman.
