MLM (My Lord & Master) and I hadn’t been going out long when I had a serious interaction with one of his skirts…

Let me explain.

MLM is seriously into his martial arts and very good at it. He’s a second dan in aikido, not one of the most famous types of martial art but very interesting. He was one of the coaches at St Andrew’s University in Scotland’s Aikido Club until he moved home away from the area. Obviously they don’t do their jumping about in a business suit and tie but in those white pyjama things with a coloured belt around the middle (black in his case). One evening MLM tells me he needs some sewing done to his new aikido outfit and would I oblige? Ever happy to show off my only feminine skill I suggest he slip into the outfit and I’d look at the problem.

Well, dear readers, not wanting to shock any of you, but he re-enters the room wearing - a SKIRT! – a long, black evening number.

"That’s a skirt!" I yell, ever observant and alert.

"No, it’s not, it’s traditional Japanese dress."

"It’s a skirt!"

"No, it’s not, it’s traditional…"

And on we went…we are known for the high quality of our debating skills.

The SKIRT was trailing on the floor and needed taking up and I dutifully obliged.

I was later to see him at his aikido club and sure enough, the higher graded practitioners wore these skirt things over their white pyjamas and only someone as deeply ignorant as myself would refer to ‘skirts’ or ‘pyjamas’.

I saw video footage of some of MLM’s tests he went through for his upgrading to second dan and I was so impressed. You know how in films you see the good guy being ‘attacked’ by a whole bunch of baddies and throwing them off even though he’s outnumbered, well that’s what MLM was doing but this wasn’t choreographed with camera cuts; this was the real thing. Five blokes (in skirts) were attacking him at the same time, he had no idea what they were going to do, but he was throwing them off him and they couldn’t get near. It was REALLY something, amazing. He’s a clever guy.

(Personally, though, if a bloke in a skirt attacked me I’d just threaten to pull it off and expose his stockings and suspenders underneath).