All of my sons are married, but only the youngest wore a tie on his wedding day. I try to persuade myself that one out of three isn't bad, but I suspect my eldest son does not possess a tie, while the middle son is compelled to own one as part of his army dress uniform. I doubt he has another.
Added to this, I observe glazed expressions whenever I mention my school uniform and my ability to tie a half-Windsor knot five times a week for six years. I know my attitude is a dated one (I can remember studs and detachable collars, for goodness' sake!), but to me a tie signals respectability, professionalism, membership of a group, and sometimes the acknowledgement of an important occasion.
I've had to learn that matters are more complicated, however. My doctor cousin now favours bow ties after a patient complained that conventional ones tickle the tummy during medical examinations. James Bond thought the man who favoured a Windsor knot was almost bound to be a cad, while the theocracy of Iran considers the necktie a symbol of European oppression.
We tend to think the removal of ties signals relaxation, but I once knew an old Greek woman who used to upbraid her sartorially elegant teacher son after school: 'Get that tie off, and get started on some proper work.' She wanted him out in the olive groves, not occupying himself with the correction of quadratic equations.
Ties as we know them became popular in the 17th century, when western Europeans decided they rather liked the strips of cloth that Croatian mercenaries wore round their necks. Of course there were popular variations like stocks, jabots and cravats, and in the width, design and colour of ties.
Ties boomed during the 19th century Anglo-Catholic Oxford Movement, and are still popular with men who aspire to be well-dressed. The manager of England's football team, Gareth Southgate, for example, is never without a tie, although his waistcoats seem to draw more comment.
Collars and ties, or lack of them, can also have a specific political application. In 2007 Robert Mugabe, fearsome Zimbabwean dictator, was invited to an EU summit in Lisbon. Gordon Brown, then prime minister of Britain, was so incensed that he refused to take part. The flamboyant Anglican Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, was similarly enraged, and cut up his clerical collar in public on the BBC's Andrew Marr current affairs show: he vowed to replace it only after Mugabe had gone.
"Alexis Tsipras, Prime Minister of Greece, vowed not to wear a tie until the Greek financial crisis was over. He has recently donned one for the first time in years, but few Greeks are convinced that the krisi is at an end. "
He was finally able to return in 2017, when he was amused and bemused to find that Marr had saved the pieces of the collar in an envelope, which he duly handed over. The Archbishop improved the shining hour and made brilliant television by saying that he could mend his old collar with superglue, but that the end result would not be satisfactory. 'The same with Zimbabwe,' he said. 'They can't just try to stitch it up. Something more radical, something new needs to happen.' He then produced a new collar he had brought with him.
Alexis Tsipras, Prime Minister of Greece since 2015, and his then Finance Minister Yannis Varoufakis, gained notoriety in EU meetings in Brussels by refusing to wear ties. Tsipras vowed not to wear a tie until the Greek financial crisis was over.
He has recently donned one for the first time in years, but few Greeks are convinced that the krisi is at an end. Pensions are scheduled to be slashed again in 2019, and a reduction of the tax-free threshold is also to take place; it has recently been calculated that the average Greek worker has to put in 198 days per year simply in order to meet tax demands, which means that the average Greek parent has little hope of providing as he or she would like for school-leaver children.
To add to the gloom, a prominent Greek-American academic has forecast nation-wide austerity for another 40 years, and says that Greece will be a debt colony forever.
I am probably not the only person to think that Tsipras should take his tie off again.
Gillian Bouras is an expatriate Australian writer who has written several books, stories and articles, many of them dealing with her experiences as an Australian woman in Greece.
Main image: Prime Minister of Greece, Alexis Tsipras arrives ahead of roundtable discussions in the Europa Building on the final day of the European Council leaders' summit on March 23, 2018 in Brussels, Belgium. (Photo by Jack Taylor/Getty Images)