Pyjama bottoms have a way of disintegrating.  And just lately I have been having other problems (I will say no more than that) with pyjama bottoms.  The night before last I had to wear short pants in bed, like an American sitcom actor just after having had sex, and last night I cranked up the hot water bottle.  It’s amazing what a difference just swapping proper length pyjama bottoms for the same thing but with no legs.

So the question was: laundrette, or Primark.  Wash the two remaining pyjama bottoms, one of which had gone missing, or: buy some more pyjamas at Primark.  I couldn’t face laundretting, so Primark it was.  Earlier this evening, I staggered forth to Oxford Street.

In the tube on the way, I grumbled to myself about how I would be obliged to purchase yet more pyjama tops, to add to the already absurd number of such garments that I already possess.

Instead I encountered this:

A pair of pyjama bottoms, as in two pyjama bottoms, and no pyjama tops.  I bought two large (L) and two extra large (XL).  The XL ones fit fine and I am wearing one of them now.  Extra large my arse!  Well, apparently so.

I feared that the merely large ones would be far too tight, but they’re okay.  I’m now wearing one of them.  A bit tight but okay, and the good news is that elastic expands when you wash it.

And all this for just twenty quid.  And no, I don’t feel bad about the terrible wages paid to the people who make such garments.  I remember winning this stupid argument way back in the seventies, when I was accused of keeping Hong Kongians poor by buying their cheap stuff.  What I was actually doing, as I knew at the time, was making them rich (which they now are), by bidding up the price of their labour.  And now I’m doing it again.

I tried to find these garments on the internet, but failed.  So I just did a photo.

Modern life is good in so many ways, but I really did not see this particular item of goodness coming.

I’ll add that the new Primark at the Centre Point end of Oxford Street, which I was sampling for the first time, was agreeably uncrowded, and generally less of a mad down-market scrimmage than the one near Marble Arch, at least whenever I’ve been there.

The above link gets you to a place that says it isn’t open yet, but it was open enough when I visited.  Maybe the fact that it was open but not yet Open explains why it was so quiet.  Maybe when these places officially Open, pandemonium rules from then on.