A friend, now sadly no longer with us, once gifted me a tie he had bought on a trip to New York. He knew I liked ties – I had drawers of them at home, and most of them had a history.
My first silk tie – Yves Saint-Laurent – was bought for a pittance in Brands and Normans in Belfast more than 40 years ago. I still have it. I have a lousy memory – I once forgot my own name at an interview I was chairing – but I remember the tie was in a display near the back end of the store, looking out onto Fountain Street. Going cheap, it was still a ‘considered purchase’.
We like gifts because they show someone cares. The gift itself is of lesser value. I had a lot of time for my friend who was the complete opposite of me, and therefore kept me on my toes.
But even in the early noughties, this particular gift carried uncomfortable overtones. It was silk and bright blue – the type of blue Paul Henry used for far away mountains in his scenes of Connemara. A thin gold thread crisscrossed the blade of the tie, forming a delicate check. It was a little ostentatious, but so far, so good.
It was only when you turned the tie around that it revealed its hidden secret.
Tie wearers are in an increasing minority, but the afficionados will be aware that some ties hide salacious scenes – mostly of scantily clad ladies. There are collectors for vintage peek-a-boo ties. But there was no peek-a-boo moment here.
Neatly stitched onto the back was a tacky gold-coloured (not even gold-plated) chain with a cartouche bearing the name Donald J Trump.
I wore it once to please my friend, and retired it to my drawer to hob-nob with Yves, and Hugo, and Salvatore, and Paul Smith (who does a neat line in peek-a-boo ties).
At the best of times, I find it hard to part with gifts, and it was with some reluctance that I placed it in the bin bag destined for Oxfam. Yes folks. It’s out there. I wonder if an Irish News reader picked it up from the Oxfam shop. Trump Signature Collection ties sell on ebay for between £20-£50.
I might have worn it tonight. I sometimes matched my ties to the occasion, one from the Smithsonian Museum in Washington for Independence Day, for example. I had a dinosaur tie I wore for union negotiations, and a tie with snails on it for management meetings at one place I worked. Puerile, I know.
Quite what to wear tonight, as I sit up with millions of others to witness the result of the US election, is still to be decided.
If I was channelling my inner Trump, it would probably be a nappy – diaper as the Americans call it – and a dummy.
All the indications are that Americans will reject the man-baby who has misgoverned them for the past four years. But in 2016 I was pretty convinced that Hillary Clinton would win it, and she didn’t – in spite of getting three million more votes. The Electoral College system, which selects the president, is skewed towards Republicans, and Trump and his allies have done everything they can to disenfranchise people who are natural Democrat supporters.
Trump, we’re told, has pulled out of a victory party and will be spending the evening ‘quietly’ in the White House – gorging on Fox News and McDonald’s most probably, and hurling out insults on his Twitter account.
Such is my naivety that I find it unfathomable that anyone could vote for Trump, in exactly the same way as I could not comprehend, when feigning delight at his gift, why my friend would put some hard-earned cash into the Trump money-making machine when buying my tie. But he did, and they do.
Here’s hoping enough have chosen to put their faith in Biden instead.
