Parting with my old tartan dressing gown recently was such sweet sorrow. We’d shared good times and bad times together over three decades.

I should have retired it years ago I know but it has always served me well and I just couldn’t bring myself to say goodbye.

I bought it in Melbourne when we lived there not long after we were married. One needs a warm woolen tartan dressing gown down there let me tell you – although, admittedly, it doesn’t have to be tartan.

But being half Scottish according to my DNA report (my mother’s family, the Scotts, were all Scottish with some McLaren in the mix too) I do love my tartan. I have tartan slippers, a tartan Tam o’ shanter cap with red hair attached (a “see you Jimmy” hat of the sort people wear to rugby) and I insist on having a tartan dressing gown too.

That tartan gown of mine is reasonably famous because whenever we have guests, I indicate that it is time for them to leave by disappearing into my bedroom and reappearing in the gown. That says it’s time to leave and when people do leave, I thank them.

“Thanks for coming,” I say … “And thanks for going.”

So, more people have seen me in my gown than probably should have. I have worn it pretty solidly since the beginning of this winter because it has been freezing in our house. Old Queenslanders aren’t well insulated, as you know. They warned us at the beginning of winter that it would be warmer than usual. It wasn’t.

Anyway, one night about a month or so ago I donned my gown as usual after my evening bath and my wife pointed out that it had moth holes in it. I hadn’t noticed. She was right. Quite a few holes as it turned out. And the wool was getting a bit tired which it would do after 30 years. That’s a long time to have a gown, don’t you think?

I only have one other item of clothing that’s as old, or nearly as old, a houndstooth jacket that my seamstress, Tess, has been keeping alive these past few years with new lining and repairs.

I suppose I could have handed the gown over to her but my wife had an interesting idea. She suggested I get a new one. I hadn’t thought of that.

It had to be tartan of course. I found a multitude of gowns online and I chose one displaying The Black Watch tartan. I have a shirt featuring this Tartan and I love its greenish hue and the history behind it.

The Black Watch is a famous Scottish regiment that has distinguished itself on the battlefields of numerous wars since it formed in 1881. Being an old Hong Kong hand I’m well aware that The Black Watch was the last British military unit to leave Hong Kong in 1997, and it played a prominent role in the handover ceremony so that gives me a sentimental connection to it too.

I’m very happy with my new tartan gown with The Black Watch tartan. I waited until it arrived before retiring the other one without too much ceremony actually, in the end.

I mean it was just a gown, right? It had been with me through many experiences but the time had come to say farewell. I probably should have had it piped out of the house to the tune of Auld Lang Syne. I didn’t. Never mind.