fashion – don't confuse the narrator

fashion update, Easter 2020

Whether or not we have any religious interest, most people in the UK look forward to Easter for a variety of reasons. Perhaps the main one is the chance of a really long weekend – although more and more businesses work on Good Friday, having the weekend wedged between Bank Holidays makes for a four-day break for many, which can’t be bad.

And then, of course, there’s the chocolate. Those Easter eggs that have been so effectively filling the spaces on the supermarket shelves left by recent stock-piling. Personally, I can’t see the point of them – although the bright wrappers are pretty, a decent slab of chocolate is far more cost-effective.
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poetry, prose and politics

In a piece on the BBC website Magazine section, the historian David Cannadine talks about ties. The article starts:

The former governor of the state of New York, Mario Cuomo, once observed that in a modern democracy “you campaign in poetry but you govern in prose”.

which certainly caught my attention.

But Cannadine then makes a strange leap to connect this to the subject of ties:

Translated from speech to dress, […] suggests that you campaign wearing an open neck shirt, but govern wearing a tie.

To press the flesh and get yourself elected, it seems essential to dress down and appear casual, like ordinary voters, rather than be buttoned up or formal.

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