Dear my Canterbury trackie dacks
I wanted to write to you and say goodbye and farewell. I know you’re just outside, not far away really, but we know, come Tuesday morning, you’ll have crossed into trackie dack immortality.
I remember buying you that sunny day at Lake Taupo in New Zealand – it was 1999 I think. Parachute silk, glorious red and blue – you needed a good home, trackie dacks, you and that oversized check shirt I bought. It’s been seldom used, hanging up in my wardrobe, a testament to my inability to recycle clothes I hardly ever wear.
But you, Canterbury trackie dacks, you were special. I wore you like a glove. Even though you weren’t for my hands. But you know what I mean. I wore you in Canberra, I wore you in New Zealand, and I wore you here in Melbourne. You were there when I slipped my disc in my back that day at the gym in North Lyneham and then heard my howls of pain later as my back spasmed, and I waited for the ambulance to arrive, with the lady downstairs playing Celine Dion. And the ambulance people wondered why I needed a double dose of morphine.
We have shared the best of times, trackie dacks, and even though you never saw the inside of my office or the dazzle of a date, you were there on a Sunday, you, me, coffee and Barry and Insiders.
You were more than manufactured silk that woke people from miles around as I ambled around. You were special – a link to my far, far, far off past – encasing my ever lily-white legs which saw the sun one or two days a year. Shorts could never reach your full-length embrace.
But in time you’ve got worn, got tatty even, though I manfully ignored such distractions. But you could not compete with the inevitable: Mrs Jezz’s fashion sense and her (quite reasonable) request that you were delisted from Team Ex-Single Bloke Fashion Jezz. When you join a new club, trackie dacks, certain understandings need to be reached.
And then, then there was the negotiation. Knowing I needed to bow to the harsh reality of the situation that one dark day I may return home only to find you placed on the parachute silk scrapheap of fashion, I bargained for you. I could have hidden you away, in the dark, dank recesses of that garage that somehow devours stuff like a vicious black hole that eats galaxies for its metaphoric cosmic brekky, but I did not. We have shared too much for that. So I bargained, and I pouted and I bargained and I pouted, pouted and bargained and I STOOD MY GROUND trackie dacks.
But I, sadly, have my price. Farmers Union Iced Coffee is a fine delicacy. Mrs Jezz knows this. In her buying said products (four), we’re supporting farmers – who, I hope, will buy other trackie dacks. It’s the circle of trackie dack life. Insert Disney cliche here. Again.
I will miss you, trackie dacks. Sundays with the (ahem) Adias gym 2000 model or whatever the guy at Rebel Sport called them won’t really be the same.
Farewell my trackie dacks.
Farewell.
