There are cardigans to be seen elsewhere

Yet again, in a shameless attempt to get my phone number through dishonestly claiming that someone is trying to impersonate me, the providers of this site have denied me access. That's why I'm moving to a new blog. I'm progressively, and a bit selectively, copying across the material from here and will be adding new stuff soon. See you all (!) over there.

Thank you.

Book Review

No cardigan enthusiast's bookshelf should be without the I-Spy Book of Cardigans (Scholastic, £19.99, 180pp, hardback). This is a sumptuously illustrated book of cardigans for the hardened cardigan enthusiast. It must be said that if you are an enthusiast you'll not fail to be hardened by this collection.

The authors have emphasised the vintage over the modern, but not ignored the cardigan revival of recent years. Collectors may wish to buy the book for its coverage of the modern, despite its limitations in that department, simply because, as the authors point out, it can't go on forever and the previous fallow period lasted for many years. There is unlikely to be such a good historical overview published in the foreseeable future.

In addition to the illustrations there are fascinating sections on cardigan etiquette (did you know, for example, that ethical cardigan wearers refuse to eat broken glass?), the history of cardigan fetishism, biographies of famous cardigan wearers and a compendium of cardigan sexual practices. There are also washing instructions for most fabrics.

By far the most interesting section, though, is the account of a period spent as the cardigan sex slave of a Basingstoke haberdasher. This gruelling saga covers years of humiliation and physical deprivation and much cardigan action. It is unclear who the actual author of this section is, but the detail leaves this reader in no doubt that the account is authentic and unembellished. The Financial Times reviewer accused this section of being little more than misery porn. This reviewer would beg to differ, having recently visited Basingstoke, it looks like quite a nice town. Without giving away too much, it can safely be said that the haberdasher had it coming to him, his premises are now occupied by a branch of Greggs. A fitting end to a sorry saga.

I hesitate to say that this is a book no self respecting cardiganwearer can do without, but really it is, there is so little otherwise to chronicle such an engaging and stimulating fetish. If you propose to read it with a friend or partner, may I suggest making sure you have plenty of lubricant.

The I Spy Book of Cardigans

That several pages of our review copy were stuck together says much for this ambitious volume; that we were unable to review those pages is a disappointment soon to be remedied when we buy our own copy. Recommended, go out and find a copy.

Posh

I am inclined, when the weather permits, to take the occasional constitutional through the medium of a long walk. Where I live there is a posh bit of town and it's in that direction I often head. The ostentation and vulgarity on display there are breathtaking. A conversation I had with a stranger on one such outing included his observing that they can't all be footballers and drug dealers. Whatever they are, they are bereft of taste.

A recent story in the Mail online confirms that one at least is a footballer, who can't sell his gaudy property for what he paid for it a year ago and has taken it off the market. It's back on now at half a million (give or take a bit) less than he paid for it. That's nearly two week's wages down the pan; I cry myself to sleep some nights, I really do.

What's this got to do with cardigans? Well, my walk takes me down Cardigan Road and pathetic as it is, that gives me a slight thrill. When I moved house a couple of years back, I did look to see if there was a way I could live in a Cardigan Street/Road/Avenue or whatever. There were many other considerations that shaped my final choice and I had quite forgotten that I'm within a couple of miles of a Cardigan Road.

This got me thinking about how many Cardigan denominated thoroughfares there might be in England and Wales (the first online gazetteer I stumbled across didn't include Scotland). There are upwards of ninety. Most are visible on google earth, some have the street signs obscured by google. Here's the one I walk down.

Cardigan Road

This month's cardigans I don't actually own. There's a few left at this rather posh retailer for eighty quid a pop, reduced from a hundred and seventy. I won't be buying any. Not because of the price, you understand, but because they don't have any left in my size. Any regular reader would know by now that I would happily sell the house for a good cardigan. Unfortunately, living so close to footballers hasn't done much for prices locally.

If only they had them in my size

Magazine

Homosexual acts between consenting adults (only two at a time) over the age of twenty-one and conducted behind closed doors were finally made legal in England and Wales in 1967, ten years after the Wolfenden Report had proposed it.

The legislation was promoted in parliament by its sponsors, Leo Abse and Lord Arran (named after a species of cardigan, he could never have imagined...) as an act of kindness to the poor homosexual whose preposterous sexual urges were certain to lead to a life of abject misery and quite possibly to incarceration in a closed institution with other men, which for some probably lifted the abject misery a bit. Prison isn't for everyone, though, so decriminalisation was quite the radical idea.

Before this time, to society at large, gay men didn't exist. I used to meet people who claimed it was better before 1967. I'm pretty sure they'd never been to prison or they might have thought differently. There were also those who told us young radicals that we shouldn't rock the boat and that having pubs and clubs that were only occasionally raided and friends who were only occasionally beaten up, was something for which we should have been grateful; that sticking our heads above the parapets was counterproductive. Of course, the very existence of such limited freedoms was entirely due to people sticking their heads above the parapet, but they never really understood this.

Arran Cardigan, worn by gay cardigan enthusiasts to recognise Lord Arran's contribution to law reform.

Wearing a cardigan has never been a radical act, unfortunately. It is however nice to think that Lord Arran's efforts on our behalf have been commemorated by the Arran cardigan.

Before and even after the '67 act there were subversive activities going on. There were code words used in ads in the straight press (I met a very nice man back in 1978 through the NME personal ads which were awash at that time with “Tom Robinson fans”, all, as I was, under age and excluded from other media). The radio, or as we used to call it back then, the radio, had requests for records on Housewives Choice to celebrate ruby weddings, which was code. There was also Julian and Sandy on Round the Horne whose outrageous polari went over most people's heads. And who could forget the Jimmy Savile Violent Non-Consensual Sodomy Hour on the Light Programme on Saturday mornings (only kidding, he did a lot of great work for charidee...).

There were also magazines, not many though. One was called Jeremy and ran for a while, available hardly anywhere. For the cardigan aficionado there was Men's Cardigans, four issues a year of men wearing knitted cardigans, smoking pipes and looking frightfully normal. It could have been mistaken for knitting patterns but there was not much knit-one-purl-one going on, just a load of code amid a sea of innocuousness and, naturally, tobacco advertisements as well as ads for car coats and driving gloves.

Men's Cardigan from 1965. Rather nice card modelled by someone thankfully not smoking a pipe. I'm betting it's in his pocket.

Arran cardigans were undoubtedly featured, but back in 1965 they had little to celebrate.

Happy new year.

Pink

There's something about pink. When I was younger a taste for pink or an inclination to wear it was a sure sign of homosexuality. The pop psychologists were all over that one, along with body language and the distant father thing; utter bullshit all of it and still is. Nevertheless it was important not to wear anything pink, lest it be thought... you know. 

Why anyone thought there should be some subcultural code going on, I can't imagine. Obviously there are and always have been subcultural codes, but to work they really need to confine themselves to the subculture and be unambiguous. Asking my new line manager when I first started work if he'd like me to suck his dick was not a mistake I would make twice; why else would he wear a pink tie? Saucy little tart, he had it coming to him.

That said I must admit I have an affinity for pink. More along the deliberate outrage line than some innate desire to have the decorative taste of a ten year old girl. I obviously have no such taste, I am a grown up man with mature tastes. Temper tantrums on the other hand...

So here are a couple of cardigans, one red with pink buttons and one pink with pink buttons.

Does that look much less butch than red with red I wonder? The real question is about the semiology of the cardigan in general and I'm saving that for my magnum opus (I'll be inviting people home to see that!). 

In this day and age would the pop psychologist read too much into wearing a pink cardigan? I would, for certain but then objectivity in the cardigan department has never been my strong point. I'm going to go out to the bank when I've finished writing this. Let's find out.

A Wildean Excursion

Let's get off to a good start with a Stars in Their Eyes reference; today, Matthew, I'm going to be Oscar Wilde.

“To wear one cardigan, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune, to wear two looks like carelessness.” Horribly mauled, but captures the essence of a predicament I find myself placed in by the cowboy who installed my central heating boiler. I'm having to wear two cardigans, not through carelessness (at least not my own) but through simple erotic delight and a lack of central heating.

The inner one is a sleeveless number with those faux leather football style buttons and the outer a Uniqlo lambswool with, well, I don't have to say do I ? Very nice, too bulky for going out, but nice indoors.

My Oscar Wilde doesn't end there, though, as I'm sure he told Bosie on many an occasion. You see, having, in my Lady Bracknell quote, laid myself open to accusations of carelessness, I'm going to excuse myself in the character of Canon Chasuble from The Importance of Being Ernest, “None of us are perfect. I myself am peculiarly susceptible to draughts.”. The canon needs to wear a cardigan, or two. I can recommend it.

Winter Draws On

That's a rather weak pun that doesn't work when it's written down. Obviously it should be drawers. It is the sort of rudery that was once forbidden by the BBC. Wikipedia tells me it was proscribed by a document called The Green Book, a guide for light entertainment producers to promote wholesome family values. It merited a specific listing, so it must have been considered utterly unspeakable. Other things that were strictly verboten were effeminacy in men and immorality of any kind.

The article says that the book was kept under lock and key. I fail to understand how this worked; why would you want to keep your rules and guidelines secret from the people who had to abide by them? Still, this was the forties and fifties, the BBC was run by men who wore tweed jackets and smoked pipes, so obviously they knew.

Which brings me seamlessly onto my favourite topic of cardigans. The temperature has dropped noticeably in the last couple of days, which prompted me to seek out an oldie but goody.

I bought it on fleabay some years back, it's knitted by hand (on a machine) and is all knit, so it curls. Aficionados of the knitter's art will appreciate this is why most patterns go knit one - pearl one. This is about the full extent of my knowledge of knitting. It has fisheye buttons arranged horizontally, I think they're supposed to keep you warmer that way.

I imagine a knowledge of knitting, however slight, would be enough to bring down upon me the full weight of opprobrium available to a wielder of The Green Book. Such knowledge in a man would be a sure sign of the very effeminacy that the book would strongly disapprove of. As well as making me unsuitable for the wireless, it would probably have attracted the attention of the local constabulary too, being so obviously an affront to civilised society, not to mention a security risk. While it was never, as I recall from my more radical days, a stated aim that gay people should be able to get married, it gives me much pleasure to call back to that period and shout, we can fucking well get married now!

Rant over. As a bonus, here's a picture of the cardigans I have had my valet lay out ready to be worn next week. I dare say when it comes to the one with the badge he will advise me along the lines of, “May I suggest that sir forego the badge with today's outfit.”. I will of course slap him soundly for his impertinence, he'd be disappointed and upset if I didn't.