Sportsjacketed

Instead, it seemed as if we’d returned for a series of interviews to “Film 62”: there was the eager, sportsjacketed interviewer, starry-eyed and awkward in the face of a Famous Person, unfamiliar with modern styles of interviewing, either intimate or aggressive, asking questions worthy of the gossip columnist.

Her six months as Alasdair’s steady had been an introduction to a world ten thousand miles from the suburban serenity in which she had grown up; a world that took in not just the hot dirty intimacy of the tenement itself, but cafes and pubs and dance-halls and young men who bore scant resemblance to the bland sportsjacketed creatures of her crescent, her church, the library staff parties.

After walking up and down outside the shop, peering in at the besuited and sportsjacketed dummies, I ventured inside, where the terms of the HP (hire purchase, or installment plan) agreement were smoothly spelled out for me by an extremely friendly salesman.