MEMBERS of the European and American aristocracies in the 16th century did it. Even Robin Hood did it. And last week I did it. I took to wearing tights.
While I didn’t actually go out and buy a pair of black fishnets in Murdo Maclean’s, I was unceremoniously handed a pair of these fine seamless creations before that wee operation in the Western Isles Hospital.
One tried to decline, of course, with a nonchalant shrug confirming one would simply resist any transvestite inclinations I might feel during my hospital stay, but they were having none of it.
Despite my sneer of appalled disdain, my otherwise caring nurse Michelle was firm. She told me it was a circulation thing and I just had to get into them. Surgeon would insist. “Oh and, Mr Maciver, also put on these paper pants if you don’t mind, thank you very much.” I know, surgeon will insist.
They were actually antiembolic surgical stockings but when you wear them everyone assumes they are tights and makes merciless fun of you.
Any portly person putting on any long legwear is a palaver best not witnessed by anyone of a nervous disposition. And it is even more harrowing in the middle of a surgical ward.
I had to do a balancing act trying to pull on the stockings with one hand while holding the curtains round my bed shut with the other so no one could barge in on me and catch me at it mid-hoist.
A couple of burly fellows from Bayble and Tong were in the beds opposite. In that uncomfortable silence, I knew they could hear me tugging and pushing, wheezing and panting.
What these guys thought was going on behind my curtains, I dread to think. Why was no one forcing them to get dolled up in ladies’ unmentionables?
Thinking I had carried out the yanking-up rather well even though I thought so myself, I was miffed when Nurse Michelle returned and was far from satisfied with my handiwork. I had to get all the wrinkles out, she insisted, otherwise the stockings would not help my bloodflow at all.
She ordered me to have another proper bash. Have you ever tried to get every single wrinkle out of your tights or stockings? You can’t just flatten a bulge or ridge.
My stockings
I began to see Nora Batty for the much-misunderstood sex symbol she so obviously was. I had to roll them all the way down again then haul them up, keeping them very tight and only releasing a bit at a time to keep up vital anti-wrinkle tension. It took back-breaking effort.
Designed for someone with longer legs than little me, the stocking went all the way right up to my, er, the top of my leg. Just like tights.
Then eventually, finally, after tugging away for what seemed a lifetime, success. I lay there perspiring but I’d got ankle, knee and thigh all gleaming smooth as silk.
Suddenly, nestling beside the overstretched nylon I felt something warm and hairy which made me realise that I had much grunting still to do. My other leg.
After I got home, all sore and moany, I still had to wear my yanked-up stockings for several days. I got used to them. It is not a bad feeling, actually, having one’s leggy bits and bobs snug in a sheer, seamless, shimmering sausage skin of wafer-thin man-made fibre. Not so much pantyhose as mantyhose.
I had this idea of keeping them on until the weekend, putting on a mini-kilt and going to the Sunday morning service at the Free Church (Continuing). It was only the threat of a messy divorce that put me off that idea.
Taking off these supportive stockings was very weird. I’d no idea that thighs and ankles could get quite so floppy. How I longed for the subtle cupping that must have so tickled the men of Sherwood and the cloth-eared superhero of Gotham City.
While I don’t really want to go into the details of my procedure, I am concerned at the ongoing speculation over the surgery. In dark corners, the gossips are making up their own minds about how much was snipped and where and why. They whisper: “They were at him for four hours, you know”, “I didn’t know you could have Botox down there”, and the cruellest barb: “He obviously failed his MoT.”
For the record, apart from maybe some skin, nothing was snipped, snapped, chipped or chopped off. Everything is working just as nature intended. It was more a fine-tuning of my engine. Mere adjustments were made to my carburettor, you could say. So my crankshaft is still in good working order and they didn’t have to touch my big end.
Iain Maciver is moving . . . to a new, permanent slot on Mondays from February 16. Don’t miss his weekly column on this page every Monday.
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