Ian McMillan: Stained tales of a lifelong slitterer

My mother used to call me a Slitterer, a magnificent word for someone who liberally spills food and drink down themselves at every meal and sometimes between meals in spite of all the precautions they might take. Say it aloud and it sounds like there’s oxtail soup going all over your shirt or rice pudding making lovely patterns on that jumper your wife knitted for you. That’ll be the jumper that shows the rice pudding stains perfectly, glowing like meteor trails in the night sky.

Yep, I’m a slitterer, so even though it’s a long way away I’ve decided what I want for Christmas this year: a complete body suit, like scientists in films wear when they’re going into somewhere contaminated. I’ll have it in a mixture of red, brown and yellow, then no matter how much tomato ketchup or brown sauce or custard I slitter down it, nobody will ever know.

I decided on the full body suit for my Christmas list at the end of a particularly stain-soaked day. The day began stainless, as it often does. I dressed in the Slitterer’s uniform of black trousers (so they don’t show the marks), black jumper (so it doesn’t show the marks), and a dark and brooding expression (so I can hide my disappointment and frustration when the slittering starts). I looked in the mirror and said, aloud, “This is the day you do not slitter.” I repeated it. It made me feel good. I was an ex-slitterer.

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Why, it was only a matter of time before I got those white shirts out of the wardrobe and ordered that pair of white trousers from the catalogue. I should have stayed in front of the mirror. I went downstairs and made a cup of tea. I stood in the kitchen and slurped. You’d think that after 56 years on the earth I’d be able to find my mouth in my face but I couldn’t. I missed my lips and drips and drops of tea dripped and slittered on to my chest.

I rubbed my jumper with a tea towel. I should have gone back to bed. Somehow the knowledge that this is going to be a slittery day makes the slitterer jumpy and more likely to slitter, in a kind of self-fulfilling slitter-prophecy. I had cereal for breakfast. I made sure I was sitting at the table with my chair pushed right up. I got the tea towel and tucked it in at my neck so it was like one of those huge napkins they sometimes flourish at you in posh cafés. All these gestures are futile because as Jean Paul Sartre, himself a slitterer, said: “When a man must slitter, slitter he must.” Well, it was either Jean Paul Sartre or John Wayne. Whichever was in The Alamo. Despite my best efforts my spoon slipped and cereal slittered all over the tea towel and somehow wormed its way behind the tea towel and my jumper and on to my T-shirt. I slurped more tea, missed my mouth again and slittered on my trousers as I stood up in exasperation.

The day carried on its slittery path: I had an orange and the juice spurted on to my glasses; I poured hot coffee on my shoes; in the evening I appeared to smear mashed spuds in my hair like a baby; last thing at night I pinched a biscuit from the tin and as I bit it it seemed to explode so I was covered in crumby dandruff.

A body suit please, Santa. A wipe-clean one.