The Postbag: How I Converted My Mates
Six letters on talking friends into briefs: a wager that went far too well, a five a side team, a wedding crisis and a son who got there first.
The Postbag: Away Games, Sofas and Spare Rooms
Six letters on staying away from home: a two night bag that lasted nine days, a sleepover settled thirty years late, and a hospital gown with critics.
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The Postbag is where readers write in and the editor writes back. The correspondents are, let us say, composites. The situations are not.
Home has walls you know the position of in the dark. A spare room has a wardrobe that opens the wrong way, a lamp with a switch somewhere on the flex, and a door that is either locked or not, with no way to establish which except by trying it.
This edition is about being a guest: the bag packed on the assumption of a fixed departure date, the sofa that turns out to be in the through lounge, the corridor which everyone in the house treats as public space except you.
Six letters. One has taken thirty two years to arrive, which we consider well within the tolerances of the postal system.
Packed for two nights, released after nine
Sir,
In February I drove to a friend's house near Lochgilphead for what was clearly and repeatedly described as a long weekend. I packed accordingly and I packed well. I do not improvise. Two nights, one spare, and a small allowance for a walk.
On the Sunday the road went under water and stayed there, with my car on the far side of it and me on the side with the house.
By Wednesday my host had established what he insisted on calling the rota, which involved the radiator in the back bedroom and a degree of forward planning I have not applied to anything since my mortgage. By Friday he was lending me things, and there is a note in a man's voice when he opens his own drawer for a guest that I would call generous with a small surcharge.
I came home on the ninth day. My hosts were faultless. I was, by the end, a project.
Angus Frayle, Berkhamsted
The editor writes: The rota is the correct response and your host deserves credit for reaching it by Wednesday. Most households take a fortnight.
Sink washing works badly at bedtime, because drying is the slow half and you have handed it the coldest, stillest hours of the day. The method that gets things dry by morning is in How to Wash Underwear Properly, and it involves a towel and standing on it.
Your one spare was doing the work of an entire contingency plan. A quick drying travel brief at the bottom of the bag changes the arithmetic of an unplanned week, because it is the pair you wash at ten and wear at seven, which is the case made in Travel Light: The One-Bag Case for Briefs.
A sleepover in 1994, and a verdict filed late
Dear editor,
I am forty seven. In the autumn of 1994 I stayed at Dean Halloran's house with four other lads from our year, and when I unpacked my bag I was ribbed for about eleven minutes on the grounds that my pyjamas were folded and that what was under them was, in the language of the time, what your dad wears.
Nobody was cruel and I have carried nothing around since. What I remember is Dean's mother at the door saying, without raising her voice, that if folded pyjamas were the most interesting thing in the house she would happily give them all something else to talk about. The room went quiet in under a second.
In April I helped Dean move a bed. His chest of drawers was open. I did not look for long and did not need to. The top drawer was tidier than mine, and the contents were not a hundred miles from what I had packed in 1994.
I said nothing to Dean. I am saying it to you instead, which I have decided is the mature route.
Paul Naughton, Warrington
The editor writes: It is the mature route, though thirty two years of silence followed by a letter to an underwear column is not, technically, letting it go.
Dean's mother is the hero of this column. She understood the only rule that matters in a room of teenagers, which is that a subject stays interesting exactly as long as somebody is defending it.
You have also described the standard trajectory without meaning to. Almost every man loud about this at fifteen arrives quietly at the sensible answer in his thirties. If you do raise it, raise it badly and briefly, which is the whole method in How to Convert Your Friends to Briefs Without Losing Them.
The stag weekend and the bag that went to Cardiff
Dear sir, I write as best man to confirm that the weekend was an unqualified success and that reports reaching you from other members of the party should be weighed against the fact that most of them were asleep for the part that mattered, namely eleven on the Friday night, when the groom's holdall left our taxi at the rank and continued, alone and at speed, to Cardiff, taking with it his shirts, his good shoes and every single thing he had packed to wear under them, a situation I handled calmly by establishing that the shops opened at nine, that we were due at the go karting at half nine, and that the groom is broadly my size, at which point I opened my own bag and issued him a pair on the strict understanding that no further conversation about it would occur, an undertaking which held for four minutes and was broken by his brother in law in the form of a toast at the karting, delivered over a public address system in front of a stag party from Swansea, and I would like the record to show that the groom won the karting and that at no stage did the weekend get away from me.
Name and address supplied, pending the wedding
The editor writes: It got away from you at the taxi rank and it has our sympathy. Every stag weekend has a moment at which the itinerary stops being a document and becomes a hope. Yours arrived early, which is the better outcome. A man in borrowed kit who then wins the karting has lost nothing at all, and the brother in law with the microphone has, on this evidence, peaked.
Packing spares for other people is the most underrated duty of the role and you did it unasked. Two extra pairs at the bottom of the bag cover the groom, the man who fell in the harbour and yourself, and a plain cotton rib brief is right because it needs no explaining. The wedding itself is handled in Under the Suit: What to Wear on Your Wedding Day.
Two in the morning, and Angela's mother wanted to talk
I am twenty three and I would like to describe an event without being asked any follow up questions about it.
Second night at my girlfriend's parents' house. Spare room, small landing, kitchen directly below. I woke at about two, extremely thirsty, and reasoned that everyone had gone up hours before and that the trip was, in engineering terms, thirty seconds each way.
The kitchen light was on. Angela's mother was at the table with a crossword and a pot of tea, entirely awake. She said good evening as though we had arranged it. I said something that was not a word.
Here is the part I cannot get past. She was not remotely bothered. She asked whether I wanted a cup, told me the glasses were in the cupboard to my left rather than the one I was opening, and then put a detailed question to me about my job, which I answered, standing there, for four minutes. She has never mentioned it since.
I would like to know which was correct: leaving at once, or seeing the conversation out. I chose the second and I am not confident.
Ciaran Whelan, Cork
The editor writes: You chose correctly and you should stop reviewing the tape.
The rule for the two in the morning kitchen is that the first person to treat it as an event creates one. She did not, so there was not one. Had you fled mid sentence you would have turned a pleasant chat about your job into a story she tells. She does not tell it, because as far as she is concerned nothing happened.
The one adjustment every guest reaches eventually is that a spare room wants a landing layer: something you would answer a door in, kept with the bag rather than in it, so that going downstairs is not a decision at all. A plain lightweight cotton lounge short does it. On the wider point, The Locker Room Question: Getting Over the Fear of Being Seen in Briefs applies far beyond the locker room.
The visiting pair, and the policy governing it
Sir,
I maintain a visiting set. Six pairs, dark, plain, kept in a separate drawer and never worn in this house under any circumstances. They travel in their own bag, come home in a sealed one, and are washed on their own cycle on the Monday.
The policy exists for one reason: a guest should generate no laundry, no questions and no evidence. I have stayed in houses where a man left something on a radiator and was thought about for a fortnight. I decline to be thought about.
My brother in law, who has heard me explain this twice, asked in April whether he could borrow from the visiting set for a trip to Lisbon. I said no. He asked why, given that I was not using them. I said that the visiting set is not underwear, it is a system, and the moment it leaves my control it is neither.
My wife has asked me to add that he took this well and that I did not.
Ronald Speake, Kendal
The editor writes: We admire the drawer and the sealed bag, both being correct answers to a problem most men solve by rolling everything into one carrier and hoping.
We would query "never worn in this house". Kit that only appears under observation is kit you have never tested, and a spare room is a poor place to discover that a pair rides. Wear each of the six at home once a season and return them. That does not compromise the system; it commissions it. Six is also more than a weekend needs and less than a week wants, which suggests a number chosen for tidiness rather than arithmetic The Drawer Audit: How Many Briefs You Need and When to Replace Them.
Your brother in law asked a reasonable question and received a lecture. Send him a merino brief of his own, for the reasons set out in The Best Merino Underwear, and consider it closed.
Ward six had opinions about the gown
Dear editor,
Retired PE teacher, four decades of it, eleven days on an orthopaedic ward this spring. I have thoughts about the gown and I have had the time to organise them.
The gown is not a garment. It is a shape with ties, designed around the convenience of the person opening it, and it fastens at the back, which is the one location a man recovering from a hip cannot reach. I put this to a physiotherapist on day three and she said, and I quote, that I was not the first.
On day four I wore my own things underneath it and the effect on my morning was out of all proportion to the fabric involved. By day six the gentleman opposite had asked his daughter to bring his in, and by day eight there were four of us, and the staff, superb throughout, treated it as an ordinary request nobody had thought to make out loud.
On day nine a consultant asked why morale in bay two was better than in bay one. Nobody told him. I am telling you.
Terry Boyce, Hemel Hempstead
The editor writes: Bay two was better because four men had been returned to the condition of being dressed, which is not vanity and never was. It is the difference between a patient and a person sitting in a chair, and it costs the health service nothing.
For anyone reading before a planned admission: ask, because the answer is usually yes for anything not involving the relevant area, and plain dark cotton that will wash hot at home is what you want. Take more pairs than the leaflet suggests, since hospital days do not map onto laundry days. Forty years of PE means you have seen the other end of this too, which we set out in The Unwritten Rules of the Communal Changing Room.
Our compliments to the physiotherapist, who deserves a column of her own.
The editor's postscript
What unites this lot is that none of them were at home, and every one of them came through it. Readers who went further and started working on their hosts should read The Postbag: How I Converted My Mates, and anybody whose away game involved a fixture rather than a spare room belongs in The Postbag: Letters from the Gym Floor.
Questions people ask
How many pairs of underwear should I pack for a week away?
Eight for a seven night trip. That is one per day plus one spare, which covers a delayed flight, a day that needs a change and the pair that gets soaked. If you are washing in the sink you can drop to four or five, but only if at least two of them dry overnight, which cotton generally will not. Count nights rather than days, and add one for any trip involving sport, long drives or a hotter climate than the one you left.
How many pairs of underwear do you need for a weekend away?
Three for two nights: one for each day plus a spare. The spare is the whole point and it is the one people cut. Weekends are where plans change, where a Sunday becomes a Monday, and where you are furthest from your own washing machine relative to the size of the bag you brought. Three pairs weigh almost nothing and occupy less space than the phone charger you also packed, so there is no real argument for two.
What is the best underwear to take travelling?
Merino or a fine cotton and elastane blend, in a brief or trunk cut. Merino resists odour for multiple days and dries overnight after a sink wash, which is what makes a small bag possible. Cotton is more comfortable in heat but takes far longer to dry, so treat it as the pair you wear rather than the pair you rely on. Avoid anything with thick waistband logos or heavy seams, which add bulk and are the first things to chafe on a long travel day.
How do you wash underwear in a hotel sink overnight?
Wash it early in the evening, not at bedtime. Use warm water and a small amount of shampoo or hand soap, work it through, rinse until the water runs clear, then press the water out rather than wringing, which damages elastic. Lay the pair flat on a dry towel, roll the towel up tightly and stand on it for thirty seconds. Then hang it over a hanger rather than a rail so air reaches both sides. Merino will be dry by morning; heavy cotton often will not.