Let loose The Kraken Th'Noo

Long time readers will know that I sometimes make and wear kilts, both in the classic Tartan pattern, and in the more specialist PVC, for the discerning wearer attending special events.  They're very liberating, especially when worn 'traditionally' and can be a source of boundless hilarity at the higher end of the Beaufort Scale.

It all started about ten years ago, when a good friend of mine decided, for one reason or another, to get married in full Scottish dress, I looked at the prices at the wedding suit hire place and thought 'Bugger that' and decided to make my own.  It's not hugely difficult, you just need 8 or 9 yards of material, put a few pleats in it, bang on a waistband, hack a couple of belts apart for the fastenings and One Eyed Murdo that lives in the croft up the road's your Uncle.

You have to be pretty confident to get away with it though, certainly in England.  I get abuse shouted at me occasionally by the odd white-van man as they drive past at speed, cleverly forgetting about that time that they dressed as Ginger Spice, edible thong and all, for 'Our Chardonnay's 13th Birthday party.'

But the positive responses far outweigh the negative.  You have to be carefull of course, I mean, there's the whole 'crossing your legs' minefield (Am I right ladies?) and if you're sitting on a low seat, knees akimbo, and there's someone directly opposite you... Well, watch their eyeline to see if you're accidentally doing your 'Last turkey in the shop' impression. You also need to be aware of a little something that I like to call 'Unsolicited female attention'.

Now, being:

a) An average bloke

b) Not a male model by any stretch of the imagination

c) Not rich

d) Not young

e) Not famous

I don't normally tend to get followed around by clouds of adoring females trying to let loose the Dandy Kraken, but when I'm all kilted-up... Well, that's a different kettle of HRT therapy,  I've lost track of the number of times that I've been ruthlessly assaulted by hordes of (presumably Kraken-Starved) middle aged women, or hen parties, in pubs - And it pretty much always plays out the same way.

• I'll walk into a bar (I've been told that I tend to throw the double doors open and strut into bars like Frank 'n' Furter facing into a wind machine, or Michael Jackson in the video for 'Bad' , when I'm in the kilt - thinking about it, It's possible that I bring some of this attention on myself) and heads will turn.

• Men wearing football shirts will shake their heads, mutter 'F'kin homo inna skirt' under their breath and try not to make eye contact from that point on, because they'll immediately turn gay, obviously. (Ignoring for a second that I'm a heterosexual as a Grizzly Bear with a Chainsaw, jumping out of a burning Lancaster Bomber eating a dinosaur drumstick with mushroom gravy.)

• Women, usually groups of women with between 5 and 8 members will nudge each other and point as I walk to the bar, there may be the occasional quiet 'Och Aye th'noo' Which I can quite happily ignore, with me not being particularly Scottish.

• The people I am with will shake their heads in a 'Not a-bloody-gain' way get their drinks and wander off to find a table.

• There'll be an 'Excuse me' or 'Are you Scottish?' from behind me, they mostly come at you from behind you see... Mostly...  So I turn around and see a female person, who has probably had a few more Bacardi Breezers or WKDs than is strictly good for them, and is slightly red around the cheeks, and has been styled by Vivienne at Primark.

• I turn around and say 'Aye?' - Meaning 'What can I do for you, lady who would probably be quite pretty if you weren't wearing the entire Boots No.7 display counter and if you had drawn your eyebrows on when you were still sober?'

• They then invariably ask, 'Are you... you know?' and stare at my Gentlemans' Area - It doesn't help that I don't wear a sporran either.  Because I invariably wear a jacket with pockets, and Scotsmen will tell you that that's what it's for, it acts like a medieval man-bag - That's not it's main use - It's mainly there to disguise any physical evidence that you find someone particularly attractive.

(It's the old question... The one that always gets asked... Do I wear a kilt in the 'Traditional Style?' - Let me put this one to bed right now... You're effectively asking if I, with malice aforethought, go out into the public space, with only a thin scrap of loose fitting material covering my genitalia, knowing full well that I'm only one inquisitive toddler away from a conviction for indecent exposure?  Is that what you're asking?

Well the answer is yes, that's exactly what I do...)

• So I stand there, look them straight in the face, and say 'Why don't you find out?'

(Yes, I'm also a Man-whore, get over it...)

To date, only one person has taken me up on my kind offer, she was less than gentle... Not only did she look like Quasimodo, but she had his Sally-pulling expertise as well - I was quite traumatised, not to mention strained, twisted and bruised, for some time afterwards. I still get flashbacks, it's like my own personal Vietnam.

You'd think that would stop me saying it wouldn't you? No? Well obviously you've been reading this blog for too long then.

I also tend to get adopted by groups of drunken Scots, and have to start using my fake Billy Connolly accent and pretend to be from Kirkaldy (pron. Kayrcoddy) to avoid being torn to pieces after someone mentions the Battle of Bannockburn and I forget which side I should be cheering for.

Everyone should wear a kilt at least once in their lives, I'm probably going to end up wearing mine HERE on Saturday what with it being hot and everything.  You could come along too if you wanted - Come up and say hello, you should be able to tell if I'm pleased to see you.

Then I posed, and he took my picture

Some of you, mainly the people who've known me a while, or worked with me, or attended a formal event that I've gone to, or helped me celebrate a birthday, will know that I occasionally make and wear kilts. Not for any real ancestral reason, although the Dandy line is almost certainly blessed with a bewildering array of Scottish blackguards and jackanapes.

I just like messing with people's heads, and, as has been mentioned in multiplicity before, I am a massive show-off - And there're few things more likely to get you noticed in public than having your knees out and not wearing any underwear - You ask any woman between the ages of 16 and 40.

However, there are times when even wearing a kilt sees you fading into the background, Highland events for instance, or weddings of whacky and/or self-important people. The thing to wear on these occasions, for the fashion concious Dandy at least, would obviously be something like full Roman Imperial battledress or the rear half of a pantomime horse. This situation vexes me greatly, the Chimping Dandy does not do 'fading into the background' easily.

Which is bizarre really, because on one occasion, I was in a room with over a thousand, like-minded, people - And I was probably one of the most conservatively dressed people there, and I had a marvellous time.

Many, many, years ago, I used to work with a young lady, quite pretty, moderately shy, and very efficient at her job. If you looked up the phrase 'Butter would not melt in her mouth' in a dictionary of phrases (if such a thing exists) there would be a picture of her. After we both left the company, we kept in touch by eMail, as Facebook etc. did not exist at the time.

One day, I received an email from her that said something along the lines of, 'We're going to a show in London and can get you some cheap tickets if you're interested'. Now, not being blessed with children at the time, both Mrs Dandy & myself jumped at the chance and immediately started to prepare.

Prepare? I assume that you're asking, 'Why would you have to prepare for a London Show? Unless it was Rocky Horror? Was it Rocky Horror?'

No...

It wasn't...

The young lady in question, and her significant other of the time, had developed certain... erm... Shall we say 'Peccadillos'? that made them very popular with other, like minded, couples (Don't get excited, that's not where this story is headed - Not exactly anyway) - And the show in question was: Skin-Two Magazine's Rubber Ball.

Google it... But probably not at work...

It's a jolly get-together for people who enjoy dressing up and pushing the envelope, or being naked and being sealed in an envelope. And they really won't let you in if you're wearing 'Smart-Casual'. So I put on my Seamstress' head (The one I keep in the freezer for situations just such as these) And knocked up a couple of costumes. I made a PVC hobble-skirt for Mrs Dandy - Which was more zips than PVC. And for myself, I made a kilt, also out of PVC (Which, for those who wish to replicate the experience, is a right, royal, bitch to iron pleats into).

We booked a VERY nice hotel in London, a couple of First-Class train tickets, and waited.

On the night in question, we'd all agreed to meet in a pub around the corner from the venue in, I think, Hammersmith. Of course, when we got there, they were nowhere to be seen (Turns out that they'd 'bumped into some old friends in the hotel' - repeatedly, in several different positions, I'd imagine), but the place was full, almost to bursting, of clinically odd people. We found a table with a couple of spare stools and proceeded to wait.

We shared the table with three giant transvestites, I don't mean they were really, really, transvestite... I mean that they were all just shy of 7 feet tall. I really wish that I could remember their actual names, but I'm just going to have to make them up, they were great... guys?... And introduced themselves with both their male and female names - 'I'm Patrick-Mary, He's Brian-Fifi and that guy at the bar's Steve-Tracey'.

One was dressed in an outfit completely made of car-mats, which gave... him... a distinctly Female Klingon vibe, one was dressed as a bald Nun, with a PVC habit (the clothing item, not the lifestyle choice), but with the buttock area cut out, and the other was dressed in sort of a neon Flashdance ensemble which left very little to the imagination for either his male or female 'identities'.

We spent a happy couple of hours, swapping stories, such as we could with our limited knowledge of this type of thing - it turned out that we'd all turned up unfashionably early. And 'Patrick-Mary' was just telling us about the time his wife came home early and found him dressed in her wedding underwear and pleasuring himself with the toilet-brush when I felt a hand on my shoulder and a German voice said,

'Excuse me, may I haf a vord?'

I looked up and saw a bald, stocky gentleman, with a magnificent handlebar moustache, wearing a tight white T-shirt and a significant amount of rubber/leather.

'My friends unt I noticed vat ju are vearing vhen you vent to ze bar, ve vere vonderink if you minded us takink a few photos?'

I looked at Mrs Dandy, she shrugged, I looked at our new found friends, they grinned and excitedly gave me the thumbs-up. I stood, and then followed the German chap to the other side of the room, where a table of similar gentlemen, clad in various wipe-clean outfits were sat, along with a collection of suspiciously professional looking cameras.

'Ju stand zere und ve take a few photos, yes?'

I nodded, still not 100 percent comfortable with the situation, but did my best to strike a pose that didn't make me look like I'd stepped from the pages of the Littlewoods catalog.

'Nein, nein, nein... More... er... GRRRRRR!'

I did the 'Hulk-Smash' pose, you know where you grit your teeth, and sort of bring your arms into your chest and bend over (towards the camera, before you ask).

'Jah, Jah, ist gut... Now er... More sidevays!'

We were starting to attract a bit of a crowd, and if I'm honest, I was well out of my comfort zone, but it was all in fun and no-one seemed to be taking themselves too seriously (apart from one of the photographers, who REALLY looked to be enjoying himself) - It probably didn't take more than five minutes, it felt like a lifetime though.

'Gut, jah, I sink zat iz enough... Can ju just sign zis?'

They handed me what I assume was a model release form and offered to buy us all a drink, which we accepted. We were there for about another hour before we decided to head off to the event proper. As we left, the chap with the moustache waved and called,

'The magazine should be out next month!'

I might save the sights, sounds and smells of the actual Ball for another episode - I think it probably deserves one of its own.


So, if you ever find yourself rambling in the German countryside, and happen across a gentleman's art pamphlet, designed for one-handed reading, lying unloved in the bottom of a hedgerow, and think you recognise someone in a two-page photospread...

You might not be wrong.