The perils of flying

In my previous blog entry you may have noticed that my To Do list mentioned the task “Try on lots of old socks”, a task which I have completed … although you also may have noticed that I haven’t yet completed “Throw out old socks”.

I’ve been doing some spring cleaning (yes, I know it is summer), and have been throwing out some old and/or excess wardrobe items. For someone who claims to be daggy, and who has mixed feelings about clothes shopping, I seem to have a lot of stuff (actually most of it is daggy). The number of T-shirts is explicable (as I think I may have mentioned before): far too many Scout Jamborees. I have enough T-shirts to last me way beyond the rest of my life, and that’s after throwing some out today (yes, even the antediluvian 1991 8th Australian Venture T-shirt).

I also have/had an embarrassing number of socks, more than enough to match Imelda Marcos’ shoe collection. What was amazing was that they all seemed to be paired up, even if quite a few were a little (sometimes a lot) the worse for wear. Some of these pairs are a consequence of long-haul flights, where you are given a little sachet containing a toothbrush, some disgusting toothpaste, an eyemask … and a cheap pair of socks for the flight. I could never bring myself to throw out the socks, thinking that they might be useful for something.

They’re not. What’s more, I have brought myself to throw them out … so I can tick off that task too.

I feel curiously free.