First day at work… and an interesting ride on the bike.

It’s been an interesting day.

It began semi-normally, i.e. showered and got dressed. But of course, this morning I put on the kilt. This did start the ball rolling on the rest of the day’s events.

The thing I was most worried about the cycling was getting on and off the bike without flashing too much. This turned out to be the least of my worries in the end. The structure of a kilt, being essentially a wrap-around skirt with the front “apron” being the overlap, caused while riding the the two front parts to start to move outwards. Thankfully, with the help of the sporran, they never separated and hence no-one caught a glimpse of anything other than my legs (and my rump every now and again when the pleats flew up).

Because of this, once I got to work I secured the edge of the front flap to the rear where it overlaps using the kilt pin. This, strangely, was said to be not how to do it in the instructions I’d found about kilt wearing. Still, it worked and this evening the kilt was far better behaved.

As for the rest of the day, well, there were some interesting reactions which essentially could be put into three categories really:

  1. Smile and/or be supportive.
  2. Blank it out, pretend that there’s nothing different.
  3. Look away, get embarrassed. (And no, I’m not talking of them seeing something which they shouldn’t.)

Now, by far the most numerous were the (2) group, though this was generally more common outside of work. In work the split was probably something like (1) 70%, (2) 25% and (3) 5%. (This shouldn’t be taken as hard data, merely the “grab a figure out of the air” affair.)

I’m not really sure why anyone would want to be embarrassed about someone else wearing clothing which is only slightly unusual. People are strange.

Still, most of the reaction was very positive. Let’s see how day two at work goes.