A portrait of the artist wearing Toxic Shorts

Everyone's got their costumes for special occasions, I've got a dinner suit upstairs that has seen a few formal outings, I have suits & jackets for work, I have certain clothes for walking the dog, pretty much the same set for gardening & an old business shirt & the Toxic Shorts for painting.

Actually, I retired the Toxic Shorts today, and replaced them with the shapeless track pants I bought for $5 in Rebel Sports about 5 years ago wore only once because people would stare at me in public.

The Toxic Shorts were bought some years ago on Castaway Island in Fiji, they were white & blue, with the Castaway Island logo down one side. I bought them for swimming togs, but only wore them once in the sea as they went completely transparent.

Their appearance, transparency aside, was not so great that I'd consider wearing them to a social occasion such as a barbecue, so they became painting attire.

No-one's painting attire looks stylish, but every appearance af the Toxic Shorts brought such remark, that the shorts achieved some level of family notoriety. Garlic cloves & crucifixes would be dusted off & worn prominently.

I was painting tongue-and-groove in the laundry today, it's a long story, but the clothes dryer got moved, the vent hole was plugged, the tongue-and-groove sanded & filled & then glooped over with something like a cross between putty and undercoat (it hides a lot of sins - there're a few borer so this is just a stop gap until the wall cladding gets replaced at some unspecified future time.) Today I applied the first top coat.

At some stage Mrs Llew popped in & noted the absence of the Toxic Shorts. But she said "What the hell is with that hideous old T shirt?"

"Doesn't it make me look like Marlon Brando?" I enquired.

"Yes, but not the young one." Was the final judgement.

Still, the laundry wall looks better than it has in years.