Fortress H: Neil Haverson has a clothes confession to make...

Mrs H was on a mission to find a winter jacket. It had to have a detachable hood, a defined waist and not be too long.

Some have a trim of fur round the hood. Mrs H is not keen on this - but sometimes it's detachable. But if it was, you can bet your life the hood wasn't. There is not a jacket in the city of Norwich that matches all that criteria.

As usual I was trailing around behind her wagging my metaphoric tail like an obedient Labrador. Thankfully some shops provide a strategically-placed seat where a weary husband can take the weight off his credit card.

We had been dragging around for a good hour when Mrs H stopped at a display and said something that made me pay attention.

'This is the type of thing I could wear to a funeral,' she remarked.

She spotted the glaze had dispersed from my eyes.

'Well,' she continued. 'At our age funerals do tend to become more frequent. You need to be prepared.'

Hmm. Not sure about that. I mean, it's all very well spotting an outfit and saying: 'That will do nicely when we go out for a meal.' But I'm not sure I'm comfortable with: 'Ah, that will work well with my black boots next time we go to a funeral.'

And, of course, it means yet more congestion in Mrs H's packed wardrobe.

Mind you, to be fair she does have a clear-out now and again. We both do. Usually this is prompted by the sudden blizzard of charity bags dropping through the letterbox.

Stuff we've hung on to for years but have hardly, if ever, worn goes into the charity bag, while other items no longer serviceable go into an unused charity bag for me to take for recycling at the local tip. Both are stored in the garage awaiting onward transmission.

Now here, I need to apologise to a particular charity. Unfortunately I don't know which one as there was a proliferation of charity bags at the time. I put a bag of clothes at the bottom of the drive a couple of weeks ago.

Last week Mrs H finally rejected a pair of my black socks. I'd persevered with them even though they had become faded and had become so tight round my lower leg there was a danger they would cut off the blood supply to my feet. I headed to the garage to add them to the recycling bag.

Now, the Fortress garage is a junk yard. There is stuff buried in there I have long forgotten I had – and therefore don't need. But a white bag stuffed with textiles should have been fairly obvious. I hunted high and low but there was no sign of it.

I can only think, in error, I must have put it out for the charity. That means some poor volunteer will open a bag to find knickers and pants with elastic so far gone they would fit a Sumo wrestler's waist. Old pairs of jeans I used for odd jobs that had holes in the pockets. These should have gone for recycling long ago. I would forget about the holey pockets so when I took a couple of screws out and popped them 'safely' into my pocket, I felt that tell-tale sensation as they slip down my leg.

Goodness knows what else was in the bag, but whichever charity got them, please believe me, I wasn't using you as a skip.

Oh, and on the subject of funerals, I am reminded of the time my mother came out with this gem. I overheard her talking with my father about a person of whom she was not particularly fond.

'Well,' Dad asked her. 'Will you go to his funeral?'

'I don't know,' Mum replied thoughtfully. 'I think I'll wait and see if he comes to mine.'