I had a situation with my seemingly much replicated winter coat just this morning. I arrived at my bus stop to find it was empty. As I was on my phone trying to see when my bus was due, I glanced up to see that a man with the same winter coat as me had pushed to the top of what in south London passes off as a queue. I was there before him but how do you remonstrate with someone in an identical coat? I wouldn’t have wanted the attention that came with such a contretemps. Then I considered the possibility that it was perhaps seeing me in the same coat that prompted Same Coat to push in. Maybe he wanted to spare both of us queueing up next to one another, looking unoriginal.
Winter coats like jumpers aren’t built as robustly as they were four or five years ago. It’s all about something that looks good now rather than something that keeps you warm. Among a certain age bracket, the over 35’s, there’s a clamour perhaps for the thicker winter coats of the past that kept us warm and which were common before the Great Recession. With a limited market these days, we’ve all ended up going for similar coats, thus increasing the likelihood of 'winter coat duplication'. There is every chance these much sought after coats might be the ubiquitous tattoo sleeve of winter coats among those of us who remember Live Aid.
I gave Same Coat the benefit of the doubt and let him board first. Ascending to the upper deck, I sat six rows behind him. One or two passengers had, I think, picked up on the duplication, but I felt both Same Coat and myself handled the situation well. In this kind of situation, you also want poker-faced passengers who aware of the duplication, have the requisite low-key features to pretend not to have seen the coat.
Three stops north, lo and behold, a third winter coat duplicator boarded. There were enough empty seats on the upper deck, the morning rush hour having passed, for this latest duplicator to sit well away from either of his winter coat brothers. He chose however to sit to my right, despite doing a double take on first sighting my coat. Same Coat had picked up on the duplication straight away and had turned his collars down, in an attempt to set it apart from the two duplications further back on the bus.
I was disappointed that Duplicator Three had chosen to sit so close to me. I pressed the bell and begin my descent towards the lower deck, disembarking from my bus less than halfway through my journey. It was all I could do to hope that the next bus along would be duplication-free.