Well, here it is.  May has arrived and now the month is nearly over, the sun has started to show up.

Lovely sunny morning today,  We had days as sunny as this in April, then it went cold again.

For many years, in the cold weather, I have worn tights. Yup, tights.

The Yanks call them pantyhose, I think that is a terrible word, just my opinion.

I happened to mention how cold my knees got when I was truck driving, to some friends of ours, This was many years ago, in the days when the trucks I drove were a bit primitive, to say the least.

Usually the drivers window was held up with a wedge and all around the pedals, the rubbers had perished and a force 10 gale would come up through the floor.

A friend said "Why not wear some tights?  Similar to long johns but thinner."

I have to admit, I find Long johns too thick, although they have improved over the years and are now more like tights, Thin and no bulk.

One my way home one day, I stopped in a small town and walked into a ladies wear shop and asked for a pair of tights.

The lady behind the counter asked me if I was going to rob a bank, When I said I planned to wear them, she burst out laughing.!

I bought THICK and I mean thick,  about 90 denier.  BIG mistake. As I was intending to wear them under jeans, then 90 den was far too thick!  This was a lesson I learnt gradually, The other thing I learnt was men don't have hips, So unless you buy them large enough, there is a tendancy to work their way down

After many years of wearing tights as long underwear, I have to say that in my humble opinion, they are a good alternative,  I know they would not be every mans choice !

There are some manufacturers and distributors who carry tights for men, Just google and lots of options come up. Sadly there are also quite a lot of fetish sites showing obviously excited guys wearing tights,  Although I have no problem with that, If it tickles your fancy, then do it.  But it does give the concept of mainstream men in tights a bad or mixed image.

The company Levee produce some nice unisex tights , the range is called WoMan.

These are well made and the only quirk is the size chart, Takes some thinking about, But well made and nice to wear.

One thing that cropped up in conversation was the furtive factor, How many men wear tights and are to embarrased or even ashamed to admit it.  As I said erlier, I have been wearing tights for over twenty years, most of my friends know and I have never made a secret of it, but even now, when I said to my wife, I bought some new tights today, She retorted with "Are they womens"?

Well actually, no, they are mine.  although were designed and marketed to women.

I decided to be outrageous and get some of these .         

They are very comfortable and feel nice on, and if you think I look stupid, well I don;t really care.

One other thought is that as my feet are always rough skinned and I dont have pedicures, then footless tights are the obvious solution.

Oh,  I got them from UK tights.

Of course, Now I have bought them, the sun has come out and it is in the high 60's and into the 70's this weekend. So they will be shoved back in the drawer until the temperature drops .

Thats enough rabbit for now.  Although as all things on this website, I might revisit to change, improve, destroy or delete.

So time for more Sidamo ( Lovely Ethiopian coffee) and a ginger biscuit.

Thank you Iceland !

Not the freezer centre or the banks...The Volcano.

Alright, I will admit I am not standing in a queue
waiting to fly off to a business meeting or
with my wife and kids, watching our holiday
shrink as we hang around the airport.

So why am I grateful?
The absolute stillness and empty sky.
For the first time that I can remember there is not an
aircraft in sight, not a cloud either,  Clear Blue Sky.

Where we live, is not on the approach run for any of the
English airports, and we see very few civil aircraft.

Those that we do are thousands of feet up in the air.
( Notice I say feet and not meters. !)

The usual overflying is done by military aircraft.
Spectacular though it is, and I have to tell you , I am so grateful that they are "ours".

There are time when they sneak up over the hill at warp factor speeds and roar over your head.

Roar is the only way to describe the terrifying noise they make.
Sheep abort, Children scream and old men need to change their trousers.

The total opposite of that is the heavy transport aircraft that go past so slowly, you wonder how they stay in the air.

Often it is possible to hear one coming and have time to finish your tea, put your boots on and stand outside the house waiting for it to go passed,

All that has stopped,  well for a while at least.  Also as the sky is blue, could there be a connection between vapour trails and rain?

Back to normal now, and people are getting home from the far away places,  spending thousands of pounds on taxis. Hire cares and other ridiculous fares,

I suppose if I was stucck in a bleak cold place, I would do my best to leave, on the other hand if the sun was shining and the beach was soft, The Sarong would go back on and I would be happy to chill until the rush was over.

One slightly bizarre situation arose when the Royal Navy were used to ferry troops returning from Afghanistan, and while they were about it, collected civilians who were stranded.

Returned home to cheers and scenes reminicent of the Ark coming back from the Falklands.  They troops certainly deserved a cheers, the tourists, perhaps not.

Wonder what will happen if the big one blows.  think the Sarongs will go back in the drawer and the thick long johns will come back into fashion .

Time for a espresso and a ginger nut.

This is a second attempt at my blog, and may get pulled back for additional content,  .... however.

When I was a young man, I usually slept in the nude, Never feeling cold enough to need to wear pyjamas or the likes.  on the odd really cold night, I would sleep in a T shirt.

However as the years have flown by and I am older now with a heart condition, The circulation is not what it used to be, therefore I now sleep in a night shirt.  I prefer something knee length rather than the full length "Scrooge" style, ( and NO I don't wear a hat!)  although I have slept in an Egyptian Galebeya when very cold.

Nightshirts for men are not a common sight and tend to be available through the mail order companies and the niche markets.

I am not sure why they went out of fashion as they are much more comfortable than pyjama's. in my humble opinion that is.

The first ones I bought were from New Zealand Silks, and although very comfortable they were a bit diaphanous,   Don't stand in front of the light !

Apart from the cost of about £29. they were not really easy care, being silk.  So when Mrs Radiostar took the washing to the river, the rocks would put little pulls in my nightshirts plus a few extra holes.

Every so often I will do a web search for Mens Nightshirts and rarely find anything I like,

There is a company in New York City, USA, who show some nice ones on their website, but they do not export, Well only to Canada.......

Then I saw this: on the Damart website.

Now I don't know about you, but to me, it looks like a night shirt

When I read through the details, it refered to an elasticated waist.   Ermmm, How can I night shirt have an elasticated waist?

Also the sizes were a bit of a mystery to an old bloke like me, such as 34+  38+ and so on,  their website size chart was really good, except it did not mention 34+ or 38+.

So despite being an expensive call, 10 pence per minute on an 0870 number, ( If they used a geographical number it would only cost me half that.)

I called their order line,  A clinically efficient lady struggled with the concept that I might want to ask a question and not just blindly order items, I managed to get her to clarify the sizing question,

It seems that 34+ is 34 and above, so I assume that means 34/35/36/37  But where do we stop, because size 40 is more than 34. I thoght what a wonderful system, so simple, in fact all you really need is one size,  If they started at 28+ then everyone could fit.

No explanation of the elasticated waist, She, like me was just reading the blurb. So I thought I would place the order on line.

The price was cheap, as they were discounted 50% and I paid about £10 in total,  The package arrived today by courier, so the price and delivery, Full marks

The product?  Turned out to be Boring old Pyjamas,

I keep looking at the picture and I have looked at it sideways and backwards, eyes half closed, eyes wide open, Nope!  Still looks like a night shirt to me.

This triggers the thought, why would they show a picture of one product and then ship out another.  Could this be construed as misrepresentation?

If I showed you a picture of a designer suit on Ebay and then shipped out something from the chain stores, while it might be just as good, It ain't what I said it was.

So if any reader of this stuff is thinking of buying one of these advertised nightshirts, I would advise DON'T.

Oh, and the size was 34+ and I ordered 38+

Of course you may be lucky and actually get what you thought you ordered, A nightshirt.

Oh and if you happen to know of where I could buy and get an knee length nightshirt I would appreciate the tip.              I have considered the ones in the ladies dept, but teddy bears or flowers aint me.

Time for a coffee I think.

April 3rd:   Here is the update of the Nightshirt that wasn't a Nightshirt.!

Damart, sent me a return authorisation and a bag to send it back to them free of charge.  I thought that was fair enough.

They also told me a load of pony about having problems with their website and that was why the wrong image was on show.......Yeah, Right.

Those of you who dabble with websites will know it only takes a minute to log in and delete an image.!

However, they refunded my money and sent an email to say they hoped we had reached a satisfactory solution.

I said I thought so, but please would they remove me from their mailing list.  That takes three months she said !   WHAT......  Then I received one of those..." Hey, you could be a winner",    mail shots, Telling m I just may have won loads of money.

Just like the ones from the Readers Digest.  The ones that won't take no for an answer.

I wrote across the address, Return to Sender, and so far, I have heard no more.

HOWEVER: Today is the first of April, and I guess they must still be having trouble with the website as the same picture is there.

BE WARNED if you decide to buy anything from these people,  The phone calls are National rate! and the goods may not be what is shown on the website.

However, You may be a lucky winner of a squillion quid. and I don't doubt Damart have thousands of satisfied customers out there.

Eventually, I went to a company called Pukka Pyjamas,

Bought one from them, it looked exactly like the picture,

exept there wasn't a man in it !  and was delivered promptly.

Good quality and I would recommend these people.

Thanks to Barry for his recommendation, by the time I saw it, I had ordered one. but thanks anyway mate.

Hopefully I will make the effort to write the odd snippet on a regular basis

I have said it before and I will say it again,
I will try to write a regular blog.

Since the last attempt, which, incidentally, I deleted, lots of trivia has taken place.

Unusually for this part of England, we have had quite a bit of snow.
It started on the Friday before Christmas, So for the first time in many years
we had a white Christmas. Ahhhh.

Actually it was bloody cold!