Special Mention - Chris Cottom

Colchester's Coolest

By Chris Cottom

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Leaving Dad pyjama-clad and pale in the nursing home, I drive back to his house to find Audrey
snouting through the wardrobe.

‘Bit early, isn’t it, sis?’ I say.
 

‘He won’t be needing any of these,’ she says, heaving some hangers of musty suits onto
the bed. ‘Man at M&S, early eighties. Nothing you’ll want, of course.’
 

‘Maybe this pinstripe.’ Straight out of The Godfather.
 

‘Won’t fit you. Presumably you lie about your gutbucket on your dating profiles? How are
the over-forties of Felixstowe? Found a frisky fishwife yet?’
 

‘Ha, bloody ha.’
 

‘My God! Will you look at this?’
 

‘The floral shirt! He got that when he was sixteen.’
 

‘Take it for rags. No-one wants stuff like this.’
 

Turquoise and pink paisley swirls with acid greens and blobs of black, it’s labelled
‘Toppickers’ over a shimmering record with a sparkly gold centre, and the legend ‘Made in
Carnaby Street, London, England.’ There’s a brace of buttons sewn to the sharply pointed collar:
a button-down without the buttonholes. He’d party in it, he’d told me, strutting like Mick Jagger
while his mates gawped in envy.
 

‘Used to have a matching tie,’ I say, as Audrey shovels dusty brogues and slip-ons into a
bin bag.
 

‘Drop this lot at Oxfam, will you?’
 

It’s not like our Audrey to give anything away. Not that it’s actually hers.
 

Tonight, I’ll open a can of Abbot Ale and listen to some of Dad’s LPs. I’ll sing along to
‘Marrakesh Express’, like he’d do in the Cortina, sunroof open and windows wide. I’ll conjure up
match days together at Ipswich Town, a quid each way at Chelmsford races, and all of us laughing
at his ‘parlez-vous Anglais please?’ I’ll remember his tears when Mum died.
 

I leave Audrey to her piles of car boot certs and eBay possibles. I know what I have to do.
 

The floral shirt will fit Dad nicely again, now he’s back to the size of Colchester’s coolest
sixteen-year-old. After Oxfam, I take it across the road to the funeral directors.