Our drinking group with a running problem has about 20 regular participants, about another 20 who turn up on and off and then there are the visitors from other parts of the world, or old timers who’ve moved away and come back for a drink or two. In about 2011 our then haberdasher decided we needed a new piece of attire, something for the cold winter months, and he came up with a blue fleece. It’s warm and even wards off rain if it doesn’t pour down too hard, and the colour is nice. The problem was that they were a) rather generously cut and b) that he only ordered L, XL and XXL. Also, he ordered 250 of them.

At first we sold them with the intent to make a small profit and I still have one from that first year, in L. Soon we started to sell them at cost to anyone who would have them. When some of us went to a meeting further afield meeting other runners, they would take a few of the fleeces along and try to flog them, which usually worked great provided the weather was bad enough and people came unprepared. Then we sold them cut-price as we ran into a storage problem. By now we only had XL and XXL left. And we gave them away as presents. I now have two more, both in XXL with my name embroidered in recognition for serving on the mismanagement team. On a winter’s day we almost look like an army, all in blue and all more or less one size because of their bulkiness.

The Ragtag Daily Prompt: Fleece