OUCH! Green and Yellow

You’re Not Quite As Young As You Feel

by Reg Green

On a bright, cheerful morning recently I decided to wear a yellow sweater and green slacks for a doctor’s appointment. I thought his staff would take it as a compliment to their skill at keeping me youthful.

And, yes, right on cue, the thirty-something receptionist who checked me in said approvingly, “You look so nice today.” I permitted myself a smile with a hint of lust in it. “You remind me of my grandfather.” she added.

PS It wasn’t till I’d written the above that a memory stirred and I looked up the P.G. Wodehouse story that described how man-about-town, Bertie Wooster, decided to go to the park on just such a day, wearing his ‘yellowest shoes and the old green Homburg.’ I was eleven or twelve when I read that story in which, as in so many other Wodehouse stories, I found a phrase to commit to memory. It’s lain there ever since. Bertie’s impeccable valet, Jeeves, shuddered at the wildness of many of his young employer’s ideas. How right he was.