My favourite childhood outfit: The coat I inherited from Grandpa became my teenage refuge'

"He was 69, too young, but on the plus side he was doing what he most loved digging on an archaeological site. We weren't close in the way I was with Granny; he could be quite scary. But we got along fine and I liked him. Mum said I could help myself from his wardrobe. I had only known him dressed for retirement, in blue workers' overalls for archaeological digging, or baggy beige shorts for caravanning holidays."

"And this overcoat. It was a proper coat black, knee-length, heavy, silk-lined made by Crombie of Aberdeen and worn by statesmen and royals, but also movie stars and pop stars. And now by me. I thought it was cool, and it became more than a coat; it was a place of refuge, a thick new outer layer of protection, against not just the cold but teenage vulnerability and insecurity."

Grandpa died at 69 while working on an archaeological site. He could be intimidating, but the narrator liked him and was allowed to take clothes from his wardrobe. The narrator found collarless shirts, a silvery-grey mohair suit and a black, knee-length, silk-lined Crombie overcoat. The coat served as protection against cold and teenage insecurity and retained a faint scent of pipe smoke. The narrator wore it with 1980s fashions—Echo & the Bunnymen badge, Doc Martens or burgundy winkle-pickers, backcombed hair and eyeliner—and used it for sitting in parks and sleeping on friends' sofas. The coat later vanished from photos and memory, then reappeared at Mum's house.

Read at www.theguardian.com