I know much has already been made of this in the media but...

...when the news is slightly interesting, it would be rude not to comment. 

And so, to the supermarket in a place called St Mellons (only in Wales), that has put up a sign instructing shoppers they must be correctly attired when buying the week's supply of ready meals and own-brand beans, and this doesn't include one's "nightwear" or "slippers".

Now, I'm sure you read that thinking, 'oh don't be ridiculous, nobody goes t'shops in their pyjamas' or 'that must happen only in little Welsh villages - bless, aren't they sweet?'  But no, people.  I'm here to tell you that it most definitely does happen and not just in Wales - I've experienced it first hand.

Cast your minds back to the academic year of 1998/99.  Steps were #1 with Tragedy, mobile phones were on the brink of being a must-have accessory and people still actually interacted in the normal way, because those nerds hadn't invented Facebook yet.  I was living in a terraced student house in the Kensington area of Liverpool - less Royal Borough adjacent to Chelsea; more boarded-up windows and burnt-out cars - with three friends, and we soon noticed the native females had a curious idea of what made one ready to leave the house.

There they were, with a large trowel's-worth of make-up on, hair done (though I concede this did often mean a Croydon face-lift of a ponytail), but from the neck down, they appeared to be wearing...no, wait, they were wearing, PYJAMAS!  And what better footwear to accessorise those teddy bears, but big, fluffy slippers.  (I have no doubt that they have been replaced by fake UGG boots now, but back in the day, they hadn't yet made it over.)

I am honestly not making this up.  And as if they knew we wanted, nay needed further confirmation that our eyes weren't deceiving us, they obliged us by being out of the house all the time.  They would regularly meet in the street for a chinwag - even in winter; everyone knows northern lasses don't feel the cold, but just to make sure, they'd throw on a manky anorak over the flannelette - or pop to the cornershop at the end of the road.  There was often a queue of them for the BT telephone box halfway up the street - clearly they were spending so much money on their 'wardrobes' they couldn't afford the line rental.

To be honest, I'm surprised it wasn't picked up by the media sooner.  Though it only seems to have been written about in this case as further demonstration of our freedom being taken away and the 'establishment' dictating what we can and can't do.  Er, they're pyjamas people; you don't wear in public the items in which you've festered all night - it's a personal hygiene issue, not the whole world ganging up on you.  Predictably, I'm in the minority being on the side of Tesco's on this one, general public reaction seems to be: let people wear what they want, there are far worse outfits to be seen whilst out shopping.  *Sigh.*

I'll give the last word to poor, restricted, freedom of expression-robbed Elaine from St Mellons,

I’ve got lovely pairs of pyjamas, with bears and penguins on them. I’ve worn my best ones today, just so I look tidy.  I go in other shops in my pyjamas and they don’t say anything. [Tesco] should be happy because you’re going to spend all that money.

Er, quite.

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