Life

Nuala McCann: There's an edgy man in striped pyjamas at my gate

This tendency to go outside in one’s nightwear is quite commonplace these days. I blame Madonna. That set of sharp cones she called a bra would have poked your eyes out. And before long, underwear was outer wear, black bras under transparent white blouses were de rigeur and the rest is pyjama history

Nuala McCann

Nuala McCann

Nuala McCann is an Irish News columnist and writes a weekly radio review.

At least this guy got dressed to take the dog for a walk
At least this guy got dressed to take the dog for a walk At least this guy got dressed to take the dog for a walk

THE big man standing at my gate looks distinctly edgy. He hovers, ambles on and stops again. Is he the look-out for a robbery heist?

It takes a while for the penny – or indeed his big dog’s leg – to drop. No, he has not a big dog’s leg... he is the owner of a big hulking dog.

It is early morning – dog time. They wander like zombies through the neighbourhood, these dog owners, tugged along by an often invisible force at the end of a lead.

The man sleep walks the big hulking beast of a morning.

I suspect him. He does not look the sort to have a small plastic bag and a dainty pooper scooper anywhere about his person.

But perhaps I am doing him an injustice. Perhaps that pool at the gatepost is a bit of early morning dew.

And besides, it is difficult to remember your plastic poo bag when you’re wearing your pyjamas under your coat.

Gotcha! Suddenly the stranger with the defecating dog becomes a kindred spirit. There is a connection.

I am not in possession of a large dog or even a tiny one.

“We’ve had two goldfish that lived for 12 years and a hamster who managed four, that is enough for any man,” said the man who took care of them. He even fashioned the goldfish its very own isolation chamber when it went bendy and started to swim wonky. So he knows a thing or two about pets.

But this is by the by. We have no dog. But I know what is it like to tumble out of bed, summoned by a beast that will not calm.

I have walked the floors with small human inconsolable beasts so I sympathise with this man out walking the dog in his striped cotton, nighty night pyjama bottoms.

This tendency to go outside in one’s nightwear is quite commonplace these days. Indeed I seem to remember that someone was writing a university study on the breaking down of social boundaries that had led to people arriving at the school gates in a fetching onesie and a smile.

Personally I blame Madonna. That set of sharp cones she called a bra would have poked your eyes out. And before long, underwear was outer wear, black bras under transparent white blouses were de rigeur and the rest is pyjama history.

The man in the pyjama bottoms at our gate made me smile. I forgave him his big dog and his edginess.

I probably should have been aghast. But you see I remember the evening at 10pm when I got a sudden call to pick up a certain person across town and I shoved the small child in the back of the car, threw a fluffy dressing gown over my jammies and sunk the gutty – that’s the fluffy tartan slipper to you and me – zooming across town.

At the inevitable checkpoint, when the police officer shone the torch in my face, he did a double take. He may have briefly considered breathalysing me. But the small child in the back in the fluffy tigger dressing gown probably made him change his mind.

I’m not really one for the out of doors pyjama game.

It is strictly for a state of emergency. And maybe, it has to be said, my eyebrows raise a millimetre at the shock of sighting young women in silk lingerie picking up a pint of milk in the local Co Op of a morning, but whose business is it but theirs?

Apart from sudden emergencies, I keep my pyjama and slipper wearing for home.

But as time goes on, I find myself inextricably drawn to the nightwear sections of big department stores. We’re not talking Ann Summers, we’re talking more hard winters!!!

I like to wrap up. Not in a onesie – this is a fashion faux pas way too far – but in something warm, fluffy and snugly. And, of an evening, the lure of the pyjamas is a siren song.

“It’s getting earlier and earlier,” says my other half.

But there is something about shutting the door on the big, bad world, lighting the Christmas fairy lights that I keep on the hearth to cheer the soul and sneaking upstairs to throw on my pyjamas.

I would live in them if I could.

Perhaps it’s that my jeans are withstanding a certain belly force and I’m just about resisting the pressing need to lie on the floor and haul up the zip with the aid of a wire coat hanger.

Perhaps it’s just that there’s something safe about pyjama bottoms – you hang loose in your night gear.

I’m with you, man at the gate with large dog, as you hover in your pyjama bottoms and big coat.

But beware. If that dog leaves a pile of poo on my door step, it’ll be lights out for you.