Reactolite Rapide

In many respects I was the author of my own uncoolness at school. It was at those times when I made a conscious effort to be cool that the gods of style and grace were laughing most loudly up their sleeves at me.

Take 6th form.

For the first time ever free from the stylistically limiting potential of standard school uniform and feeling confident enough finally to not let my mother buy all my clothes for me I made some unfathomably bad choices.

Corduroy trousers in blue, green and black. The black, colourwise, were probably the least offensive but nevertheless the auditory properties of corduroy meant I was accompanied by a “fwip-fwip-fwip” backing track wherever I walked. And I walked everywhere.

Blue and green corduroy also did not do much for my vaguely burgeoning goth tendencies.

And then there were my glasses.

I’d gone through much of my school career (a)stigmatized by the good ol’ never-let-you-down NHS spectacles that all children grow up hating. Even those who never have to wear them. Of course, Jarvis Cocker made them trendy years later but for me, with my school career firmly ensconced in the eighties, years before Pulp made a name for themselves, they were another burden on young shoulders already weighed down by the cheapest Burton shirts I could find.

But when I started 6th form I was given the opportunity to cast off the yolk off NHS speccyness for good. I could go for some proper metal framed grown-up ones.

My innocence and unworldliness meant I was easy fodder for the advertising industry and before I knew it I’d been taken in by those awful eighties adverts for Reactolite Rapide glasses. Spectacles that become prescription sunglasses the instant they are hit by even the tiniest light wave from the earth’s nearest star.

On the telly this was fine. Chisel jawed models sunbathing on yachts in the Med or quaffing Bacardis from the roof-top garden of a skyscraper in Madrid.

But not so fine on a white skied day in Leamington Spa.

Because what the adverts didn’t tell you was that Reactolite Rapide glasses could not be seasonally adjusted. You couldn’t turn off the ability to sun-glassify in winter. Or even when you were indoors and happened to be sat near a window allowing access to direct sunlight of varying degrees of intensity.

Because of Reactolite Rapide I was the one kid in my 6th form who wore shades in December. Who wore shades inside the classroom. Who wore shades even when it was raining and overcast and the sun was obliterated by atmospheric precipitation.

Reactolite Rapide glasses were not cool and never made me cool. They just highlighted and drew attention to my fundamental uncoolness.

To be frank, wearing a brown paper bag would have had the same effect but at a fraction of the cost.

Do girls make passes at boys who wear sunglasses?

No. They do not.

Not ever.

It took me another decade to finally rid myself of hang-ups about not being cool, to stop trying to be anything but myself.

Once I managed that things came a lot easier. And not wearing corduroy helped too.

But even now, even on genuinely sunny days when I can feel my retinas crisping beneath an ultraviolet barrage, I still cannot bring myself to wear sunglasses.

As affectations of coolness go, it is an affectation too far.

I would rather squint like a nerd and not see properly at all.

Weirdly, the world is much better that way.

Use It Up And Wear It Out

I had a refreshing encounter with a plumber dude this morning.

Refreshing because (a) he was amenable to doing some work without the sharp intake of breath which normally accompanies a contractor’s commencement of laborious activity but mostly because (b) he whipped out an iPhone which quite frankly looked like it had been used to detonate a landmine.

The screen was cracked and fissured so much that activating any of the apps must have felt akin to caressing Bernard Cribbins’ whiskery jowls. There were paint spatters. There were oily skid marks. There were questionable potholes that may or may not have been caused by high impacts on the quantum scale. Of course, the allusion to Bernard Cribbins breaks down completely at this point.

It was a well used, possibly well loved, definitely not well looked after device.

And that pleased me.

It pleased me because the thought occurred that too often these days we lavish such love and status onto our electronic gadgetry that the merest hairline scratch on a touchscreen, the merest infinitesimal microdot of grit under a plasticoating and we have to head straight out to the vendor to buy a new one. A brand new one because the old one has now been sullied and besmirched. Part of the joy of having it and showing it off is showing it off in prime brand spanking new condition. The tiniest chip will render it second-rate and give it the appearance of being second-hand and, worse still, make it appear as if the device is nose-diving already off the cliff of contemporality and pitching itself useless-face first into the pit of obsolescence.

It was plain that what mattered to the plumber chappy was not the appearance of the device and, therefore not the status the device could confer onto him... but that the device still worked. It was functional. The touchscreen still worked. He could make still calls. Access his apps. Troll on Twitter. Download dodgy films from the internet.

In his own small way he was doing his bit for the environment (if not for the economy). He was, if not mending and making do, then at the very least just making do.

And this to me seems a good way to go. How many of us as we pass through life cast sneering glances and sneerier comments towards battered vehicles we see out and about on the roads? Battered computers being used? Battered bags carried around? Battered clothes being worn?

If they still work and are fit for purpose we should use them. They’ve gobbled up God knows how many of Earth’s resources just by being made. Let’s get our money’s worth before we buy yet more gadgetry and add to the resource debt that is currently mounting up against us.

Let’s use things up and wear them out. It is the highest honour we can afford anything that we create. To use a tool until it cannot be used anymore.

To this end then, despite the holes in the back of my underpants I am going to continue to wash and wear them. The front bit is fine. The hammock effect is uncompromised. I’m going to maintain their functional status for the long haul.

We shall go on together until the end. Or at least until my dangly bits go into freefall.

And I defy any of you to tell me I’m wrong.

Devey For Vendetta

For those of you who don’t have access to UK terrestrial TV (terrestrial? Is that even a proper term that can be applied to the HD digital extravaganza that composes most TV channels these days?) Hilary Devey is the multimillionaire business woman with shoulders pads like two US aircraft carriers playing tug-of-war and a voice like Darth Vader smoking stinging nettles through an Alaskan oil pipe who co-fronts the British version of Dragon’s Den.

I’m sure most of you are familiar with the format of Dragon’s Den. Five fat cat business moguls laugh and sneer at the pathetic attempts of various bedsit scientists to come up with “the next big thing” and prise 100K out of their greedily mercantile little paws.

Well, Hilary is one of them. She’s a dragon. She’s the weird mumsy-esque dragon who dresses like an extra from classic mid-eighties Dynasty and talks like Phyllis Pearce from Coronation Street.

She also has a face whose resemblance to someone else has for years been on the edge of my consciousness but has never quite broken through. Until now...

The likeness is uncanny. And I quite like the idea of Hilary practising knife-throwing skills around old London town whilst alliterating huge monologues around the letter V as she blows up the Houses of Parliament to the aural backdrop of the 1812 Overture. This was surely a casting exercise that the film makers of V For Vendetta are now kicking themselves for missing. They needn’t have bothered producing all those masks. Just give her a moustache and a smartly clipped imperial and she’s practically there. I bet she’s even got the hat somewhere in her own wardrobe already.

But for all I’m taking the urine out of this strangely Punchinello cheeked lady I can’t help but quite like her.

There’s something frail and human about her for all she expectorates Piedmont gravel every time she opens her mouth. I quite admire the fact she has made it in the male dominated world of business and made it without emulating (or even emasculating) not only the men but also the other women. Hilary is very much “out there” on her own. She is what people commonly call “a character”. A “personality”. She’s practically her own archetype. The anima of some weird medieval carnival god hand-carved by drunken monks on Lindisfarne as Viking raiders attempted to gain forced entry to their vellum lined inner sanctums. Oo-er.

Hilary appears to emanate her own completely localised biosphere. A Hilary Zone through which we – the denizens of the outside world – are filtered and interpreted before her formidable commerce-based intellect can fully ingest and process us. And if we are lucky, offer us 100K and her worldly-wise business acumen to ensure our new fangled, patent pending self-cleaning pooperscoop gets pride of place at Pets R Us.

Hilary is one of us. Slightly weird, slightly unhinged, more leftfield than Grayson Perry and with the bad dress sense and wardrobe to match. But she don’t care. Hilary is her own woman and does her own thing. She has cut herself adrift from fashion, taste and public opinion. The only thing that keep her moored to the plane of existence that we all share is her uncanny ability to make money. And, I sincerely hope, her unerring ability to throw razor-sharp knives at bent politicos.

Hilary, I salute you.

Long may you reign vainglorious and victorious at the vulpine vanguard of vicarious visual verisimilitude.

Amish Country

On occasion I feel a yen to adopt the Amish way of life.

These occasions usually coincide with a BBC documentary about Amish people being broadcast on TV but it is precisely this battle against my more superficial tendencies that gives the desire such weight in the first place. I get sucked in. I get immersed. For the space of an hour I believe that I too can lead a simpler, plainer, more Godly existence. That I too could raise a barn.

The thought of doing away with gadgets and electronics and the world wide web, I confess, has an appeal.

No more mobile phones. No more slavish umbilical-like connection to the internet. No more Facebook. No more Twitter. No more Viagra emails. No more links to nude photos of Keeley Hawes that at best don’t work and at worst install Trojans onto my hard-drive.

Life could be so much easier. So much cleaner.

Not that it would be totally without its complications. The documentary I watched last week stuck in my mind because of Mr Amish’s (I forget his name) admission that he had to fight constant internal battles to keep control of his own lust. For that reason he had imposed the desire upon his wife that she did not wear low cut or revealing tops. And by low cut or revealing tops we are talking about a single button being undone at the top as opposed to a V-slit that plunged all the way down to her barn-raisin’ vajazzle.

This was the man’s own wife, for Heaven’s sake. Surely you’re allowed to feel a little lust for your own wife? Surely it is a prerequisite to the marriage contract in the first place?

It was at this point in the documentary that my fantasy broke down. It was at this point that I realized I just didn’t possess the necessary spiritual and physical dichotomy to love someone but to consider any kind of physical expression of that love as being at odds with my spiritual development.

I guess I’m just too steeped in sin and the ways of the sinful world. Curse me and my irredeemable libido!

Giving up the internet and games consoles is easy. Any fool can do that. The real test is plainly cultivating a desire not to shag the person you’ve fallen in love with even though having kids is, spiritually, a good thing.

I know, I know. I’m over simplifying. And I truly don’t want to be glibly denigrating the Amish way of life because part of it definitely does attract me.

Back in 1996, during a whistle-stop tour of America and Canada’s East Coast, I actually visited a real life Amish town. Intercourse, it was called. And without a drop of irony too.

I kid you not.

I can remember we were allowed inside one of the houses though told not to speak to the occupants and to behave with a quiet sobriety  at all times. I felt extremely self conscious. We’d been informed that the Amish frowned upon any kind of adornment or needless decoration on their clothes and there was I, dressed in a leather biker’s jacket with tassels down the arms and a painted design on the back, and my lapels literally festooned in badges. Hey, I was in my twenties, OK, and more tasteless than I am now.

I remember feeling ashamed as the Amish woman went about her chores – putting a pile of freshly washed clothes through a mangle much the way my Nan did when I was a kid. I daresay she didn’t give me a second look – Lord knows how many tour parties had marched over her porch that week alone – but I felt petty, stupid and of no consequence. I felt foolish, vain and, paradoxically, deeply shallow.

It left a lasting impression on me and I stopped wearing the jacket and badges soon after.

And now whenever I read about or watch programmes about the Amish way of life I feel a small internal tug, a slight beckoning towards the ideal. And Lord knows there’s enough about modern life that repels me so I have a force driving me from behind too.

But I can’t quite reconcile myself to the complete Amish lifestyle. Not really.

I have a tendency to rather enjoy low cut and revealing tops. Alas, that internal battle is lost before it is even begun.

My mother always used to say I was born in a barn (because I’d never close a door behind me as a kid).

Sadly, I very much doubt I shall die in one.


P.S. Just as an aside: this is my 900th post...!

A Nerd’s Penance

In a move sure to alienate my remaining 9 readers I must here apologize to Red Dwarf.

I wronged you.

Back in your heyday I was proud to be a Red Dwarf geek. I watched religiously. I used the word “smeg”. And I wore your T-shorts with unironic pride. Smoke Me A Kipper I’ll Be Back For Breakfast was the one I was most proud of.

But during series 7 things went awry. The writing duo split due to artistic differences. Chris Barrie left meaning that Arnold Rimmer – always the lynchpin of the show for me – disappeared. I felt you lost your way. And because of that I never gave series 8 a chance. I was too quick to spot faults or take you to task over some comedic departure. And as for the 3-part special a couple of years ago... I got as far as recording Back To Earth but never watched it. I caught a glimpse of the middle episode and it all seemed too wrong. It all seemed too lazy and obvious. A storyline that treated the viewer with contempt. Like Bobby appearing in the shower in Dallas.  And the cast looked old and haggard. They looked like the residents of a nursing home dressed up in Dizzee Rascal’s cast-offs. Even Kryten had a paunch. I stopped recording and hit delete.

Red Dwarf was dead to me.

The nerd dream was over.

But this year, in an effort to teach our eldest boy about comedy and the joy of the classic British sitcom, we started working our way through the various boxed sets that I own. I had the complete Red Dwarf – minus the final 3-parter – and thought that the early ones at least exemplified all that was great and good about a classic British underdog sitcom.

To my surprise series 7, when we got to it, wasn’t as bad as I remembered it. And as for series 8... well spin my nipple nuts and ship me off to Alaska... series 8 was rather good. Considerably fine in places.

I’d misjudged the show. I can see now that, at the time, I’d become too precious about it. Too unyielding in my expectations. Sure Rimmer was a loss in series 7 but the Kochanski storylines added a bit of depth. And everybody’s return in series 8, although originally seen as a cop out, actually worked. Rimmer and Lister sharing a prison cell actually returned the show to what it had always been about. Banter. Dialogue. Not special effects and huge studio sets. Just the cut and thrust of insult and counter-insult.

Why did I not see this at the time?

I took a chance and bought the final 3-parter. We all watched it with baited breath.

Sure, the crew all looked old and haggard. But that kind of worked. They’d aged and mellowed. The script reflected this. And bugger me if Craig Charles, as Lister, didn’t even actually do some proper acting in a few of the scenes. Tears and wobbly upper lip and everything. And the Blade Runner pastiche worked too. The homage elevated the story and gave it some drive and purpose. A fitting final curtain call as curtain calls for sci-fi sitcoms go.

For those of you who are scorning this post... just take an honest look at yourselves. I bet a fair few of you were there in the early years. Watching. Laughing. Red Dwarf was our sitcom. It was our show. Sure we outgrew it, moved on, no longer thought it was nerd-cool enough. But for a time we had a bond.

All I’m saying is, it might be worth giving it a second go. A review.

If I still had my Smoke Me A Kipper T-shirt I’d be wearing it again today. And though the pride might be a bit self-conscious it would, nevertheless, still be there.

I want to lie shipwrecked and comatose, drinking fresh mango juice...

All Hail My Hair

I’ve never expressed my love for my hair before but I feel it is time to get personal and say the words that are sprouting in the deepest chamber of my heart.

My hair, I love you. More than that I am grateful to you for sticking around for so long.

I know 42 years doesn’t sound much. Certainly not when Canadian Redwoods can live up to a thousand years and Bruce Forsythe’s grip on life seems to be eternal. But if I’m honest I didn’t think you’d make it through my twenties.

My dad showed distinct signs of male pattern baldness in his early twenties – receding hairline at front, sides and rear. The monk’s pate soon revealed itself.

I felt that Fate was surely waiting in the wings to cruelly crop my luscious tawny brown curls. It would only be a matter of time.

In my late teens I made the decision to grow my hair long. I’ll make the most of it while I’ve got it, I thought. And for the next decade I wore my hair down to my waist.

It thinned a little I’ll admit. I braced myself for that first small tell-tale hole in the carpet to appear.

But it didn’t. It wore thin. It got a little threadbare. But full depletion never occurred. I outgrew my long hair. In my thirties I got it cut and went for a more respectable, shorter, office friendly length.

I feared this sudden change in volume and weight might trigger off a seismic follicle reaction which would see my locks leaping off my head like hirsute lemmings.

But no.

Here we are over ten years later and – though various stray fibres make escape bids daily in the shower or on my comb – largely my riah has remained securely in place.

And now I’m getting my hopes up. I’m beginning to get confident that maybe my lugs are here for the long haul. That me and my quiff are destined to share a worm-eaten box together in God’s good brown earth, destined to be examined and carbon dated by a hologramatic version of Tony Robinson in the year 2678 (a date that I have just typed in at random).

I know that the odds are stacked against me: work stress, youngest boy about to start school next September, eldest boy approaching teen-hood, my complete and utter contempt of Grecian 2000... all agents of the dreaded demon of depilation... but I feel that the roots of my hair run deep. We are bonded in ways that are unbreakable. Unassailable.

Not even Delilah herself would dare mess with my mane.

My ruff is too rough to be ravaged by mere Philistines.

So take a good look at me, Old Age! I’m coming for you permed and preened like Jon Bon Jovi in his heyday! Look upon my locks and weep oh poor denuded ones!

Hair today. Hair forever.

Amen.

This was a public service announcement brought to you on behalf of my hair. Thank you for bristling.

Vajazzle

I did something last week.

Something unexpected and amazing. Possibly even a little daring but in all honesty I can't recall what it was.

I just know I did something.

Something so hot and entertaining that half the world came round for a look.

My blog stats went (for me) through the roof. No more a mere 150 visits a day. We were talking 500+. And it went on all week. 7 days of mass(ish) interest. I felt like a porn site (but the wife was looking over my shoulder).

My God, I thought, I've bloody made it. I'm piloting my madcap moon rocket to the blogging moon. My blog has got vajazzled and everybody wants to come and get a slice of the action.

Man, I was shaking my blogging booty!

They'll all be coming to me now, I thought. Megabucks advertizing deals. Publishers. Film producers. The pizza boy from Domino's (I'd ordered a pepperoni special).

But then it all died away.

Just like that.

Zip. Nadda.

I have no idea why. It was like I was popular for about 7 days and then the halo of coolness floated away and found someone else's head to crown.

My vajazzle plainly wasn't good enough, wasn't long lasting enough. The slice of my pie wasn't tasty enough for a second sitting.

I'm back to a mere 100+ visits per day again.

Back to obscurity.

Back to my unadorned, unenhanced self.

Back to the way nature intended.

*Sigh*

Oh piss-flaps!

Phonesex

The ex had given good service and I did feel slightly guilty about dumping her but it was time to move on. In her glory days there had been something ineffably satisfying about her touch. Her smoothness. The way she’d nuzzle against my ear and purr gently. I knew instinctively how to press her buttons.

But she’d lost her shine quickly. Begun to look dated, dull and slow. Times had changed. I had changed. But she just couldn’t keep up. We spoke about a facelift – we shouldn’t have; it only got her hopes up. The truth was, down at the fundamental level, she could no longer give me what I needed. It wasn’t her; it was me. I had moved on. My aspirations had changed. I wanted more than she could give.

Initially work sorted me out with a little something on the side. A model that they’d pay for. One of the perks of the job. She wouldn’t ever really be mine but I could use her during work hours. For “work” business. And I have. I’ve used her good and proper. I have availed myself of every one of her amazing services. She’s sleek and fast. And she’s slim – God; she’s so slim – and she warms herself so lightly in my hand when I hold her.

But this new mistress only highlighted even more how much my old girl wasn’t up to it. How far she’d fallen from the top of her game. But I kept hold of her. For old time’s sake. For home stuff; for personal stuff. We were still officially “an item”.

But it couldn’t last. We couldn’t go on. It got to the point where a parting of the ways was inevitable. The new model was shaming her into dysfunctionality. She’d breakdown on me when I needed her the most. Throw moodies. Dirty protests. Her little face that used to light up at my merest touch now refused to acknowledge me altogether.

With my new mistress practically living in my pocket I just couldn’t justify going all out for a top of the range full-on replacement. I’m not made of money and two high maintenance babes would be beyond my meagre means.

So I went for the cheap option. A Nokia 2330. Only £30. Calls and text. Internet as well but the display is £30’s worth of cheap and nasty. The phone’s clunky. I took the memory, the SIM card, the very soul of my old lady and stuck her into the body of this new one. It felt like bad voodoo. She awoke to find herself in a body that was new but somehow not as good as the original one she’d had in her prime.

It was the ultimate betrayal.

My new mistress laughed cruelly into the vastness of her onboard MP3 memory and I knew – felt for the first time – that I’d truly done my old girl wrong.

How could I have been so callous? So uncaring? Didn’t over 100 numbers stored on her old battered SIM card speak of a relationship that was worth saving?

So I’m looking at the £30 body. The bland shell that houses the life of my beloved. And I’m thinking if I can transplant her soul once I can do it again. Make a deal with the devil or with God or whoever and transplant her into a body that will allow her to run, to skip and to pole-dance for me once again. Just like the good old days. In short, why not flog the “old” new body on eBay and then supplement this remuneration with a little more dosh and insert my sweetheart into the mobile phone equivalent of a Bugatti? The new Nokia 5230 for instance? I mean just look at the body on it...

My fingers are tingling just at the thought of those keys... that smooth purple back. The option to slip an SD card in and out of her whenever I feel like it. And best of all a touch screen that I can caress and manipulate! That I can finger gently. This could be a new honeymoon period for us both. A reaffirmation of our vows. My girl will be young and firm again. Eager and responsive to my touch...

And as for my mistress... well... She fits snugly into my back pocket. There’s no need for her to see anything. No need for her to know.

I won’t tell her if you don’t.

Although... thinking about it... maybe they’d be up for a little call sharing? Conference calls...? A little blu-tooth connectivity?

Ooh!

Excuse me, folks, I have to go. My mobile phones are ringing.

Sauna Coats

I really should have more sympathy because when I was a geeky teenager I too did this: wore a long black coat even when the weather was warm. Even when the summer heat was beating down onto my angular shoulders like a scorching hammer onto an extremely bony anvil. I persevered. I stuck with the sweaty neck and the rivulets of moisture that ran down between my callow shoulder blades. Just so I could walk around with a swirly long black coat and imagine I was somehow cool and mysterious.

It had nothing to do with painful shyness and a need to obliterate my physical form with a large bail of machine processed wool that had been tailored for a man 5 sizes bigger than me.

No. It was about fashion. It was about coolness.

And if I suffered in the heat then I suffered for fashion.

And looked an absolute twat (sorry: wassock) in the process. Because I can see now that I did not look cool. I did not look like Keanu Reeves in The Matrix. I looked like a nerd who just didn’t have the confidence or maybe the intelligence to dress in a manner that was climate appropriate.

People were laughing at me behind my back but I couldn’t see them because the huge airplane wing collars of my ex-army de-mob coat were obscuring everything that existed behind my 18 year old ears.

But I can see it all now. Because every time Leamington Spa is blessed with warm weather – as we have been this week – there are inevitably at least 2 members of the local populace who (like me when I was a barely pubescent teen) persist in wearing a huge, ankle-dusting coat of leather so black it looks like it has been woven out of hairs from the devil’s own arsehole.

And instead of reaching out emotionally to these idiots with sympathy and understanding I instead feel an overriding urge to sing as loudly as I possibly can the opening bars of Rage Against The Machine’s “Wake Up” used in the closing credits of The Matrix.

When my family and I are cruising the windy streets of Leamington Spa in our trusty Peugeot, the moment they hear a “Na-na-na-na-na! Na-na-na-na-na!” burst from my lips all eyes will swivel to the pavements in search of the black caped sweat crusader who has crossed my field of vision.

And there he will be. Black coat lopping the top off sundry dog turds as he walks, legs struggling to lift the massive moonboots he is wearing on his feet and his head bowed and dripping inside the inevitable hoody that he is wearing beneath his absurd trench coat.

Na-na-na-na-na! Na-na-na-na-na!

I’m not sure why it angers me so much. Possibly because I am in some way angry at myself for not waking up to myself sooner. If I could go back in time I’d give myself a kick up the arse (if I could find it beneath all that voluminous material) and urge myself to put on a T-shirt. Get some sun on my arms. Not sweat so much. Let the air get to me and circulate.

Heaven forbid, let the world actually see me.

Who knows, if I’d done that I might actually have got myself a girlfriend before my 30th birthday.

After all, miracles have been worked with less.

In the meantime: Keanu Reeves, you’ve got a lot to answer for (and don’t even get me started on those stupid ruddy sunglasses)...

I’m A Tramp

Yes it’s true.

See these fingerless gloves hovering in front of you? Well, could spare some change for a cup ‘o tea, please? I promise not to spend it all on meth. Honest, guv. Cough cough.

Well OK. So I’m not quite begging on the street just yet, nor selling my body for the price of a burger but I do have a confession to make that may see me part of the way there in the eyes of some of you.

Ahem. I’ve been wearing the same trousers to work for the last... ooh, 4 weeks at least.

I’m sure people must have noticed. I mean, they have a white paint mark on the thigh that is pretty hard to miss and is quite distinctive.

I’d like to point out at this point that they have been and do get washed regularly (but the paint mark on them is permanent).

How has this come to pass? I mean, having one pair of shoes is understandable in a man but only one pair of trousers?

It wasn’t always like this. My wife, God bless her, regularly restocks my wardrobe (er... for “wardrobe” read “drawer”) at Christmas and my birthday with fashionable items that, to be honest, I’d never think about buying for myself because I just don’t think about that sort of thing. Usually these items of apparel last me a good 18 months or so and I have never, until now, found myself short of trouserage.

But somehow, this year, I’ve gone through more trousers than Paris Hilton.

It’s the keys that do it, you see. The keys of responsibility. I have to carry more keys around with me at work than a screw at Strangeways. A great fob of metal that, if ever used in combat, would be as lethally effective as a spike encrusted mace. Open a door or open a hoody’s skull... it’s all the same to me.

But the average pocket of the average pair of trousers just cannot take the sheer volume of iron that is hammocked within them. I’ve tried to alleviate the tonnage by suspending my fob from a leather lanyard that I bought in Wales. But it’s no good. The keys chafe. The keys wear and tear the delicate fabric of my inner lining. They eat it away completely within a matter of mere months until the trousers themselves are beyond repair.

I’ve got through 2 pairs already this year. And now I’m down to my last.

Unfortunately a poor church mouse such as myself cannot just go out willy-nilly and buy a pair of trousers off the shelf without there being a big household budgetary knock-on effect. Trousers or food? Trousers or food? Which would you choose?

Which is why I must thank a fellow blogger for coming to my aid.

The Dotterel over at Bringing Up Charlie recently ran a prize draw. And yours truly was fortunate enough to be one of the winners. I received a £25 voucher for Marks & Spencer as my bounty. It was timely indeed.

Dotterel, thank you. I am going to M&S later today to get myself covered up appropriately.

The trousers, when I get them, will be completely on you.

Er... well, not quite, but you know what I mean...

Au Naturale

Whilst looking for some nice pics of Jasmine Harman for my previous post (a very pleasant way to spend ten minutes) I came across this on-line "news" item – forgive the inverted commas but it is the News Of The World Magazine after all.

It seems Jasmine was given the opportunity to have a Photoshop makeover.

She gave a body beautiful wish-list to some computer graphics geek and - hey presto - he airbrushed and pixel-tweaked a picture of Jasmine to her own vision of perfection. The result can be seen above.

What is interesting about this "experiment" (‘cos it’s not just an excuse to publish a picture of a pretty woman in a bikini, no sirree, absolutely not) is that Jasmine didn’t like the results. She didn't like the perfect version of herself at all but preferred herself as she really is.

How refreshing, because I have to say that so do I. And for the same reasons that Jasmine cites. The perfect version looks unreal. Unnatural.

Now maybe this is just because the graphic artist was piss-poor at his job and his eye for (so called) perfection was as canted as most teenagers who only get to see a woman’s naked body when it has a couple of staples running through the navel or when it’s badly pixellated on porntube.

Or maybe some of us more enlightened folk just prefer the real deal?

There is after all something adolescent and immature about what constitutes (in men’s eyes at least) the “perfect” female body. Pneumatic breasts with nipples that forever point upwards no matter where gravity is pulling them. Washboard stomach as taut as a drum-skin. Thighs as smooth as fleshly applied plaster (by a professional obviously).

Women with those attributes only exist in top shelf magazines and the fashion glossies.

Literally. We all know they’ve been as airbrushed as Jasmine’s picture above (just more insidiously).

They don’t actually exist in the real world.

Such injudicious tweaking gives people – men and women – false expectations of themselves and each other. Well, this is hardly news.

But sadly we now live in a world where even the most outlandish expectation can be met if you have enough wonga to pay for it.

Which got me thinking. How many people who have plastic surgery to marry themselves up to some flawed idea of perfection end up secretly hating the result once the surgery and the healing process is over? Or wishing they could revert back to how they were before?

It’s a very expensive mistake to make. I bet Jasmine is pleased she merely went under a virtual knife than a real one.

As am I. I moved away from the airbrushed woman (homo-airbrushus) in my late teens early twenties. A real woman is always far more attractive and far sexier in my opinion – and yes that includes cellulite and boob-droop and a wobbly belly.

I just hope that all the women that sigh over chesty pin-ups like Daniel Craig and George Clooney secretly feel the same way about us men. Because believe you me, none of us are physically perfect either.

The airbrush doesn’t give a damn about gender… it just wants to sell a little more copy.

Blokes

Whilst sitting pleasantly comatosed in front of the TV last night one of those shiny happy femininely positive fashion shows came on and neither Karen nor I had the gumption or the energy to reach for the remote. This particular one was called Twiggy’s Frock Swap and was basically just a televised version of that newest of trends to hit the UK’s Bingo halls and beauty parlours... the clothes swap party.

Premise: get a group of glamorous ladies of assorted ages and sizes together in a warehouse with cartloads of their old clothes and cast-offs and let them swap their clothes in a vaguely entertaining fashion conscious eco-friendly way. The clarion calls runs along the lines of: ladies of Britain recycle your clothes don’t bin them (or send them to starving children in Africa) – it’ll save you money if not wardrobe space!

It was slightly more interesting than the cushion whose soft woolly surface my face was half submerged into.

But while I listened to the glorious voice of Lauren Laverne wash over me like a warm Geordie breeze I had the thought: why don’t they make programmes like this for men?

And the answer hit me almost straight away.

Picture the scene: Gok Wan cakewalks around a group of Weatherspoon’s throw-outs in his high heeled diamante winkle pickers.

“C’mon guys let’s get swapping those g-strings and string vests! Woohoo!”

One shambolic hoody steps forward offering up a pair of torn and faded baggy-arsed Levi’s. “Er. Yeah. I got these to swap.”

Some nerdy looking sci-fi junkie steps hesitantly forward. “Yeah. Cool. Er... I’ll give you a couple of Playstation games for them if you want... Grand Theft Auto and Halo...” He shrugs noncommittally.

Hoody, nodding Noel Gallagher style: “Yeah nice one. Done mate.”

Goods are exchanged. Silence reigns. The men nod mutely among themselves and fidget uncomfortably before the camera.

In the background Gok tears out his hair in long thin oily strips and collapses sobbing to the floor – obviously overcome with the intensely broiling testosterone. The producers meanwhile tear up the series' contract and head out to the pub.

Blokes, you see, we’d just be too damned sensible to be entertaining.