Remote working has wrought many changes in our lives, some unexpected these three years later. For instance, pre-Covid, attending the newsroom every day I always wore a jacket, shirt and tie, trousers too (mandatory!). Even as more and more of my dear, respected colleagues lapsed into the ultra-casual, jeans and T-shirt (shhh!!), I was not for turning.
My first editor liked us to dress well as whenever we were out of the office, he said we represented the paper. It was also a mark of respect to the people we were interviewing, he felt. I concurred, even as, where ties were concerned, all around me “lost” theirs.
No more, of course. I’ve celebrated Christmas more times than I’ve worn a tie these recent years.
My preference in wearing a tie is for the Windsor knot. Triangular, it is wider and seemingly more “balanced” than other knots. They say it was originated by the UK’s King Edward VIII, he who abdicated, though I only found that out recently. Others say it was his father, George V, who invented it in the 1920s. No matter.
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I was reminded of it last month, in that roundabout way my peculiar mind sometimes works, while people responded to the Windsor Framework presented by the EU/UK as solution to the Northern Ireland protocol problem and the DUP’s refusal to take their seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly.
The initial negative reaction of the DUPs Sammy Wilson, Ian Paisley jnr, and Nigel Dodds led me to wonder whether this “deal to end all deals” would end up retitled the “Windsor Not”, as the reflex, negative position of hardline unionists to just about everything, reasserted itself. All about ties too, theirs to “the motherland” across the Irish Sea.
It also concerned me that this Windsor Framework perpetuated the unionist veto with its Stormont Brake under which 30 MLAs at Stormont can begin a process blocking EU legislation they don’t like. The only stipulation is that those MLAs must come from two parties, of which there are three unionist parties at Stormont – the DUP, the UUP, and the TUV.
As we mark the 25th anniversary of the Belfast Agreement, it remains unhealthy for Northern Ireland that one community alone there has such veto.
Windsor, in Berkshire, England, from Old English Windlesoran, for “slope with a windlass”.
