The guitar is safely stowed in its gig bag and extra padding added in the form of clean undies, socks and the shirt I will perform in. The wrong colour or collar size and an entire performance is on the verge of crisis. A troubadour's vines say so much about him.

My shirt of choice is a charity shop bargain - it says "beat", it says "devil may care", it says "I don't have an iron".

My trousers, designed and constructed for a rangy 6-foot-plus "man of action" give me (5 foot 8) a slight Charlie Chaplin-esque appearance, but have a vast amount of room for a man to spread out in - particularly useful on long train journeys.

The pockets are, as a consequence, deep beyond belief. I draw admiring glances from passing strangers as I root around inside, somewhere close to my ankles, feeling for loose change.

The ensemble is completed by a pair of handmade Spanish shoes that curl up at the ends to an alarming degree and have unusually begun to wear out from the inside. Folded pieces of The Guardian fill the holes that have appeared in the innersole.

Heads turn as these clothes move through the train, the man inside, just a passenger, but how can he possibly fail with threads like these? His family wave him off at the station with loving cries of "You're not wearing that are you?!"

Ah yes, a troubadour's vines say so much about him.

Nick
nick@nicksaunders.co.uk
www.nicksaunders.co.uk