Culture

In a Word . . . tie

Remote working has meant no tie or jacket – I fear I could revert to student ‘style’

Patsy McGarry's face
Patsy McGarry
Sat Jan 9 2021 - 00:30

Don’t even think about it! Not yet, anyhow. There is no hurry. Not in this year of coronavirus 2021. Leave those decorations up a bit longer. By order. And allow that shedding tree to stay standing. Leave those twinkling lights on too.

January 6th this year has been extended to the end of the month. It’s a special dispensation to help ease us all through this ongoing pandemic. January 6th being the date when most people remove all evidence of the previous Christmas, leaving just memories.

Whatever the event, they’re all that’s left you. “Time it was. And what a time it was. [...] It was a time of innocence. A time of confidences. Long ago. . . it must be. I have a photograph. Preserve your memories. They’re all that’s left you,” sang Simon and Garfunkel on that 1968 Bookends album.

One comparatively trivial memory I will retain from 2020 is that I didn’t wear a tie once after mid-March in that year. So? You might ask. Well, it’s very many decades since that has happened in my life before. The job, you see.

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Editors liked their reporters to wear a jacket and tie – (shirt, trousers and shoes too, of course!) In more recent times this appears to have fallen into disuse among younger media people but for my generation it was seen as a mark of respect for people you met in the line of work. And you were also seen as publicly representing the media organisation when out and about.

It became an unthinking practice on my part, sometimes to a ludicrous extent. Then a jacket is so handy for carrying the wallet, phone, notebook, pens, etc.

But there I was in November 2014 at Goal’s Tierkidi refugee camp in Ethiopia’s Gambella province, wearing jacket and tie at temperatures in the high 30s, if not higher. The embarrassment was worse than the heat.

Remote working has meant no tie, or jacket. But I now fear I could revert to student “style” again. Back to when, at the end of one working summer, I bought jumpers of the same colour in New York. I liked the shade. To all and sundry it seemed I wore just one all that following year in UCG. I wasn’t worried!

Tie, from Old English teag, for "cord, thong, fetter".

inaword@irishtimes.com

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