Someone wrote to me the other day, people do you know, although I have to say that unlike some authors claim, I am never inundated. Anyway, they had read one of my older stories, well, this one in fact, Tee Shirt Time, and suggested that it was a bit hurried and would stand a rewrite to expand it. If someone takes the time to comment then I feel that I should take the time to check the validity of that comment. As my close associates will confirm I never take things to heart, and I never get upset by criticism. And anyone who can write porkies like that deserves to win some sort of prize.

Anyway, as my dear wife would say, stop wittering and get to the point which is; I agree, so here is a revised version.

Tee Shirt Time

Everyone has phases in their lives, quite apart from the obvious ones involving age: Picasso had his ‘blue period’, Churchill his ‘wilderness years’, Tony Blair must have had a phase when he could answer a straight question ... well, all politicians avoid giving a straight answer to ANY question. The answer is always bound up with ifs, buts, and other distractions, so that you do not know what he or she thinks; just that you imagine you got an answer ... still, there we are. Me? Well I had my ‘tee shirt time’, a fascinating phase that I look back on with some pleasure.

I’m a graphic designer and illustrator and it all began when I was asked to do a presentation to a group of business people on the subject of design, part of which was to run through company logos, which ones worked, which didn’t, and some which were a waste of time. I decided that I would start with a short history to show that the basis for logos is in heraldry, and making sure that your troops could identify each other, and the enemy. Well, I got the usual ‘Powerpoint’ presentation together, showing how things got started, how people had gone wrong; Brits will remember ‘Consignia’ which was the Royal Mail trying to re-brand itself, the kiddies in the marketing department said that if you wanted to go global then you needed a global image. It seems that they didn’t stop to consider that anyone in the world who sent parcels would probably know who the Royal Mail were, and where they came from. I also found images of the British Airways re-branding, one of the biggest cockups of all time. I suppose that if you are Australian, as the then chief executive was, and probably a republican too, then you don’t understand what the Union Jack means to the British. BA thought it would be good to have images on the aeroplane tails giving a flavour of the places they flew to, and the artwork was first class. Trouble was, people didn’t want to know where they flew to, other than home to Heathrow, you may be at an airport in some benighted corner of the globe, but when you see the union flag on the tail of your aeroplane then you know you’re headed home.

Coke was interesting until I discovered that there is part of their website where you are welcome to download their logos. They don’t even tell you not to alter them, because they know that the Coke logo is always recognisable, and any publicity is better than none. British Petroleum was another, but I had to sign to say that I wouldn’t even alter the colours. Fair enough. But there was one area where I was having problems. I just couldn’t get decent images of banks’ logos. Some British banks still use heraldic devices as their logos, and as this was an important aspect of what I wanted to say, I had to get them. Lloyds is one of the classics with its Black Horse, and another is Barclays who use an eagle, although describing it as a vulture might well be more accurate.

One of the things I have been involved in for some years is the organisation of farmers’ markets, which are held monthly in many small towns. I set up brightly coloured market umbrellas and a number of small producers come to sell anything from sausages to cakes and jam to vegetables and every kind of meat. As long as they produce it themselves they can attend. In one small town the local branch of one of the big banks had decided that we were attracting a lot of people, and perhaps they could make use of this to sell some of their services. That was where I saw the opportunity to obtain one of the logos that I wanted.

This Saturday, as usual I was just wandering around chatting, and making sure that everything was running smoothly, and that’s when I saw her, the lady from the bank. Now I just know that you are expecting me to tell you that she was a total knockout. But no, she wasn’t. She was somewhere in her forties, quite ordinary, but nice, you’d really not look twice and neither would I. Just another mum with children probably at uni, boring husband and a nice house. Nice and ordinary seemed to sum her up. But isn’t that always the kind that’ll surprise you?

She had a slightly cuddly figure, nothing out of the way, but you just knew she felt she should diet, but probably wouldn’t because in truth she didn’t really need to, dark hair cut fairly short, an attractive face behind spectacles, and nice legs. But what really caught my attention was her tee shirt, not because it was nicely filled, and indeed it was, but because it carried the bank’s latest logo, and I wanted a picture of it. She was standing, a sheaf of leaflets in one hand, and a bunch of helium filled balloons in the other, trying to catch the eye of people who didn’t want to be caught.

I usually have my camera somewhere to hand when I’m at the markets, nothing fancy, just a simple digital, but publicity shots are always needed and that is good enough. So I picked up the camera and approached her.

“May I,” I asked, “take a picture of your chest.”

Well, OK, it isn’t the world’s greatest chat up line, but it certainly got her attention.

“Only,” she replied, “if I can do this.”

And she moved the bunch of balloons she was holding, each with the bank’s logo on it, in front of her.

I explained what I wanted.

“Only if I can take it off,” she said, “I’ll go over to the bank and do that.”

“Tell you what, why don’t I come with you, it’ll be easier to photograph inside. The light’ll be more stable.”

She led me across the road to the bank, and we went in. There was a staff member and a customer chatting over coffee just inside, and we passed them and she took me into an interview room.

“You hang on here and I’ll just go and change,” she said.

“I thought you were going to take your tee shirt off,” I replied.

“Not here,” she said. And giggled.

“Why not?” I asked, “No one will see.”

“What about you? I can tell what you want to see.”

“Oh, I don’t count, I’m just the camera man...”

I moved forward, as if to assist, and she just melted into my arms, heaven knows what turned her on, but something certainly did. I’d like to think it was me of course. We went immediately into a passionate kiss, she was rubbing herself up against me as her tee shirt passed up her body, over her bra, and a very quick break in the kiss as it passed over her head. I dropped the tee shirt on the table behind her so that I knew where it was. Keep your eye on the objective. This move exposed a very nicely filled brassiere, which I felt duty bound to remove. I didn’t really see her breasts until afterwards, but I did bend to suck her nipples which enabled me to get my hands up under her skirt and remove her knickers which were discarded on the floor. I picked her up and sat her back on the edge of the table, she put her legs around me to draw me in and I entered her. Ah! The velvet Tardis! We moved together for several minutes, her arms and legs holding me, my hands caressing her breasts and gently pulling her nipples, our mouths firmly clamped together, and complete and mutual satisfaction achieved in what felt like a remarkably short time. It is surprising just how these things happen some times.

We relaxed for a few minutes, and then:

“I don’t know what came over me, I’ve never done anything like that before. Well ... not for a long time anyway,” she giggled.

“Well, I know what came in you.” You can’t beat an old cliché.

“That was very nice,” she said, kissing me, “but I’d better get back to work or I’ll be missed.”

She bent to pick up her knickers, whilst I picked up the tee shirt and quietly let myself out.

I have no idea how she got from the interview room to the ladies to get dressed, but when I saw her a bit later she was wearing another tee shirt. It had an older version of the logo and I wanted that too, but I thought I’d better not push my luck. She looked across at me once with a smile, and then I didn’t see her again because I was busy.

I completed my presentation using the tee shirt, and I summed up my design philosophy with a picture of an old Willys Jeep. “Less is more”, I said, “Really, would you want to drive one of those?” My audience did not. The next slide was a Cadillac Eldorado Brougham. “Too much,” I said, “is never enough.” Went down a storm.

Life went on, and I realised that I had a wonderful chat up line, so I kept it going. After all, I reasoned, why would ladies wear tee shirts with slogans on them if they didn’t want men to look at their chests? Over the next few months and into the new year, I enjoyed a fair amount of success with a number of ladies who were wearing tee shirts. And some who weren’t, I never rely on just one line.

You often hear blokes described, often by themselves, as tit men, or leg men, or some other part of the female anatomy, and you’ll think that from this I am a tit man. But not so, I just love all parts of women, yes, even their minds. Curiously you never seem to hear women make similar claims about men. Oh, they’ll tell you that some guy has a nice bum, but in general terms women seem to prefer the total package, tall, dark or fair, handsome, and slim but well muscled. Mind you, if he’s wealthy then short fat and ugly will do just nicely thankyou. You see? Practical, and sensible. And yet there are exceptions.

I was very fond of Rose, we met about ten years ago and then met up about once or twice a month over several years, but business only. Rose owned a snail farm, yes, honestly, and had, by reputation, an appetite for men that bordered on the voracious. She was an attractive blonde, and whilst no spring chicken, looked as though she could go the distance several times without stopping, though I had never experienced that myself. It wasn’t that I didn’t fancy her, but with her reputation I felt I was going to be compared to my predecessors, and y’know, I wasn’t sure I fancied that. She had had, she told me, a toy-boy for a short while, sort of lifeguard type, and shagging him was great, stamina, size, you name it he had it, a nice bum too, she told me, see what I mean? So she decided that she ought to reward him, and took him out for a meal. They sat there in silence. You see they had nothing in common, there was no meeting beyond sex, and I don’t care what you may think, you can’t screw all the time, sooner or later you have to stop to recuperate.

But we did get on, and we did talk. Until one day she turned up wearing a tee shirt that had a couple of snails with their shells in um ... appropriate places, and I cracked up. Rose wasn’t amused until I told her the story, and after that it wasn’t long before we were in the back of my van, tee shirt discarded along with most of the rest of her clothing. I should tell you that the back of my van is fitted out for living, so we weren’t shagging on a pile of tools or anything like that. She seemed to feel that I came out reasonably well on comparison, so I wasn’t too unhappy, and neither was she. But we weren’t going anywhere, and Rose had already chosen her next move. Rose chose donkeys. No, no, shagging them is illegal in this country too. Muffin the mule is just fine, although you don’t see much of him nowadays, but shagging donkeys, no. What women see in donkeys is beyond me, but then I don’t much like horses either, great smelly brutes that are as thick as two short planks and jolly dangerous. As Oscar said; dangerous at both ends, and uncomfortable in the middle. Curiously, although I’ve never been on a horse, I did fall off one once. I was only a young lad at the time, maybe fourteen or fifteen, when a girl of my acquaintance was given a horse. You ought, I was told, to have a go. So her dad very kindly, bent forward slightly, clasped his hands for me to put my foot in, and as I did so straightened up to boost me into the saddle. I had some idea that you should stop at the highest point, but I was going too fast to accomplish this, and went straight over, landing on the far side on the ground. The horse never moved. So you see, I did fall off, but I was never on it. Anyway, just down the road from where Rose lived was an enormous donkey sanctuary, and that was where she chose to spend her spare time.

Funny thing is, that of all the worthwhile charities there are in Britain, cancer, Cruelty to Children or Animals, heart disease, the lifeboats, whatever, the donkey sanctuary is the biggest. Perhaps women do like big cocks after all, because donkeys are certainly not pikers.

Another tee shirt conquest was. Sandra. Sandra was just fifty, and she was a very attractive woman, short curly hair, still dark brown, you can tell its not dyed from the odd grey one, beautiful clear blue eyes and a full lipped mouth, and as soon as I saw her my thoughts turned to ... well just how long seduction would take. As it turned out the attraction was mutual and I could have probably removed her knickers in short order. But that takes away a lot of the fun. So I stretched it out over several weeks, gradually getting her to the point where she was almost desperate to get to the main event. I suppose you’ll say that the tee shirt was purely incidental in this case, but it did have a bearing on the matter.

Because it said, ‘Flower Arrangers do it in Church”, and that’s a challenge isn’t it?

I’ll draw a veil over what happened, you’ll probably think it’s sacrilege, but since I’m an atheist, and I once heard our vicar say, ‘she’s not a Christian, she’s a flower arranger’, though not to be honest in respect of Sandra, I can’t be sure.

What I can say with certainty is that flower arrangers do it beautifully, and enthusiastically. Even in church.

The markets went on, one or two each weekend, with other things happening at the same time in various places, but the bank hadn’t put on another promotion in this particular town, so I hadn’t seen the original lady again, awful, but I never did get her name. And then we came to the March market. The weather was just about perfect as it very often can be in March, mind you it can also be dreadful, but you pays your money and you gets no choice, not in England anyway.

Since everything was running smoothly I had left the market for a few minutes to browse in the newly opened second hand bookshop. There were of course loads of books but none on the particular subject which I was looking for. I have to admit that American railroads are a minority interest here, but you never know your luck, I have had some great finds. What I did pick up was a slim volume entitled ‘Dorset Privies’. Now, you may well think that the smallest room is a subject which should not be discussed, but to be honest with you everybody takes a crap, shit, dump, whatever you will, every morning, unless they are unwell, even the Queen of England. And there are some very funny stories associated with the loo, kharzi, shithouse, or whatever you call it.