I'm not talking about walking out the front of the house in the morning in your pyjamas with your shirt on back to front to pick up the paper.

Because, really, how many of us do that these days? Get the paper delivered I mean.

It's more likely we're sitting down in the privacy of our own home viewing a digital version of the paper with no pyjamas on at all. Because, hey, it's a free country and it's not like you're wandering round the street naked. That tends to happen more often when you hear the garbo coming and you haven't got the bins out.

The fact is we're all vulnerable to the odd wardrobe malfunction and when they occur the best you can do is limit the exposure.

But in the grand tradition of wardrobe malfunction moments, I had an incident over Easter that reminded me you must always remain vigilant despite yourself, and quite possibly, because of yourself.

Recent rains had encouraged rampant overgrowth in the garden. As a result I was forced to go hand to hand with the jungle over several hours of intense defoliation one afternoon. By the end, and let's face it - there is no end with gardening - I was a physically and spritually broken man motivated by only one thing - beer.

Or at least that's what I told my neighbour when he asked if I was OK, or needed a lift to the hospital, or to a beer. At that stage they seemed like the same thing but I assured him I was good as gold.

My one-track intention was to chuck some sluggos on under my dirty gardening clothes, ride my bike down to a local public pool and wash off all notion that gardening is good for the body or soul. And then go get beer. It was a pretty simple mission for a simple man who was simply rooted.

That didn't prevent me picking up something "not quite right" on the personal radar as I stripped down to my budgy smugglers poolside. It was more than just the self-conscious fact I wasn't quite living up to the standards of Max Dupain pool deck athleticism. It was only after entering the water I realised that my sluggos were on inside out and that I'd made my majestic entry with a little white tag hanging off my jet stream.

I'm blaming dehydration and I probably could have cared less if I could have got over the idea of exiting the pool in the same what now seemed mortifying fashion, and then showering. But no, suddenly I developed standards. I think they call it personal pride.

So in a manner designed not to draw attention, and which quite possibly resembled a man being mauled by a shark in a public swimming pool, I proceeded to adjust said sluggos under water, by taking them off and putting them back on, surrounded by frolicking family holiday hordes.

It struck me in that moment it was the kind of awkward, hard to explain manoeuvre that could get a middle age man arrested if anyone had been paying attention.

But that's the thing with wardrobe malfunctions, generally no one does and life goes on.

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