I've been sat here at work all morning quite (relatively) happily, but have just been struck with the realisation that I'm wearing a horrible, bright purple jumper. I bought it last weekend, along with a load of other clothes that I've now decided I hate, and I'm stuck in it until I get home tonight. Does anyone else ever get this, or is it just me? One minute absolutely fine, the next - wooosh - horrendously self-concious and feeling like an utter twat

I've been sat here at work all morning quite (relatively) happily, but have just been struck with the realisation that I'm wearing a horrible, bright purple jumper. I bought it last weekend, along with a load of other clothes that I've now decided I hate, and I'm stuck in it until I get home tonight. Does anyone else ever get this, or is it just me? One minute absolutely fine, the next - wooosh - horrendously self-concious and feeling like an utter twat

I have a fair few pieces of clothing that I really like, but Maria does not like.

I rarely get to wear these.

Yeah, and just you try telling her that any of her clothes are horriblly unflattering or look stupid.

I doubt the charity shops would accept those.

I doubt the charity shops would accept those.

Yeah, and just you try telling her that any of her clothes are horriblly unflattering or look stupid.

I've always maintained scrupulous honesty with HC over her clothes purchases and always explained why. I mean, FFS, if you don't want to know DON'T ASK and if you do ask would you rather I lie and let you go out looking unattractive or weird? Clothes can be both very flattering and unflattering - some of the fashions out there are truly cretinous at the moment/or were up until recently.

Mrs C is brilliant about this - when we got together we had a mutual clothes cull. She will also get me to go and buy her clothes, as I have awesome (and surprisingly restrained) taste in lady clothes for ladies.

I'm actually shocked that nobody has taken the piss out my jumper. Oh well. Is that kind of thing acceptable these days then?

I'm actually shocked that nobody has taken the piss out my jumper. Oh well. Is that kind of thing acceptable these days then?

Well it certainly explains where your taste in lady clothes for men comes from.

I'm fairly sure I should have a vagina.

Only the best for you, darling.

I'm actually shocked that nobody has taken the piss out my jumper. Oh well. Is that kind of thing acceptable these days then?

You'd only break it anyway.

some of the fashions out there are truly cretinous at the moment/or were up until recently.

I should explain that I hate clothes shopping because it's so futile and annoying, and I do it so infrequently that while doing it, I walk around feeling like some sort of trampy terrorist who Does Not Belong, not least because I spend 90% of the time glancing hopelessly around scanning the area for something that I would bother to stamp on if I found it burning at my feet one day. I'm not fashion conscious and don't have any particular style or whatever you're supposed to have involving clothes, but I'm pretty sure I know when something looks like shit. It simply staggers me to see how much space these shops can fill up with clothes that manage to bridge the gap between bland and vile, and get away with demanding that people not only pay for it, but do so via their nostrils.

And of course, you can't trust the staff for any sort of advice because they're all 16 and would wear a plastic cock on their head if someone on telly did it first. So you're on your own, and as a lone male you just look suspicious somehow in clothes shops, even if you're not already as reclusive and shop-hatey as I am. They're places for women, and men are only allowed in if they're in a loudly chuckling and possibly slightly drunk twosome, or are being dragged around by a woman.

In about an hour I managed to find almost seven things in town that weren't violently hideous, laughably extortionate or distressingly dull (or all three, indeed). Still cost me a lot, but it won't ruin me, and I needed new clothes badly. I even bought jeans, although seeing as there wasn't a single pair of trousers anywhere that weren't either jeans or IMPORTANT BUSINESSMAN style, I didn't really have much choice in the matter. I'd have gone for the wanky smart ones over the trendy casual ones, but I have loads of dull trousers at home for work, so.

The other pair I bought were creamy-white things that probably have some stupid trendy name, but I was happy thining of them as "not jeans", so bought them. Either way, they don't fit, because I was naive enough to think that taking measurements of my body and comparing these to the ostensible measurements of the clothes would be enough, when of course, nobody in the clothes industry can count. Also my body apparently doesn't meet EU proportion requirements, so when I take them back I'll have to choose between a pair with legs that fit but slip effortlessly off my waist every twenty seconds, or one that fits my waist perfectly, but leaves half of my shins bare. Tossers.

Still, the shirts fit. I did intend to buy some colourful ones as a departure from my usual "Fuck it, black'll do" look, but I was quickly reminded of how this attitude originally came to be when it proved impossible to find a shirt that utilised a real colour and not YET MORE FUCKING PASTELS.

"I want a blue shirt, you hear me? Blue."

"These are blue."

"No. NO! That is not blue. That, boy, is what the B&Q paint catalogue calls 'April sky', or 'Dewdrop', or 'lachrymose'. It's not a real goddamn colour, okay? I want a shirt that makes people stop in the street and say 'Fuck me, that's a blue shirt'; the colour you would reach for if an alien landed in your garden one day and asked 'what is blue?'; a colour you could make flags with, not this inoffensive pale pansy-arse non-blue pastel shite."

"I don't think we have any other colours."

"Man, I would fire you so fucking fast... Boris!"

"Aye, sir?"

"Get the torch."

"Aye, sir!"


But anyway. I found a red shirt, so I bought that and a couple of black ones, because it was either these or horrible farmhouse kitchen-cloth grid patterns, black WITH SHINY PATTERNS OMG that at a particular angle make your back look like the wall of an Indian restaurant, or financial rape in return for an identikit shirt with a crass corporate logo emblazoned across every available space. Then I tried to buy underwear.

Socks weren't a problem. Black socks? Hundreds of them. Six pairs for £7. Ten pairs for £15. Two for a fiver. Six for eight. Eight for two. Nine for eleven. Basically it seems you can get any number of pairs of black socks for any number of pounds, as long as both numbers are under 15. No problem. I chose a pair quite explicitly claiming to be "the most comfortable socks in the world!" with the sole intention of disproving this claim by trying on every single pair of socks in the world until I find a more comfortable one, and can then get my money back under threat of a complaint to Trading Standards. Always thinking, me. The trouble is, there's only so much comfort to get from socks, isn't there? In fact as long as socks aren't highly uncomfortable, they're as comfortable as they'll ever get, surely? And unless the socks are made not from cotton but from rusty sheets of iron or sellotape and shattered glass, they're never going to really be uncomfortable, are they? Seriously. Have you ever put on a sock and thought "ahhhh, man, that's the stuff"? Socks are either comfortable, or you're not actually wearing them. There is simply no scale. I've been had.

So, that's socks thoroughly sorted out (has the word 'socks' become completely meaningless to you yet? Socks socks socks. Socks. Sock. No? Try reading it aloud). Now, kecks. Where are the keck... oh dear christ. It's a wall... a storm... nay, an apocalypse of kecks. I've never seen so many tightly-bundled packets of nadge-wrapping. Holy christ. Surely, surely here I can find some straightforward black boxers or something...

Surely.

Any minute now...

...

What in the hell is a "slip"?

...

...

Is that woman following me?

... Any minute now. Perhaps the next shelf.

Surely, I mean, jesus, there are hundred... thongs?

THONGS? What the hell is this, the Mister Universe section?

...

ORANGE thongs? What? Why?

...


She is following me. What's that all about?

...

This is stupid. There can't be that many pants in Uxbridge.

...

Black.... ish. But they look uncomfortable. Ugh. I really don't want my package to bulge across the room at all times, thanks.

white... white... grey.... pink.... grey... black but in a packet with two vile stripey things that look like something a child would wear... grey.... more vile stripes...

...

What the hell is "tanga"?

...

OH FOR THOR'S GAMMY KNEE I JUST WANT SOME PLAIN, SIMPLE, BLACK KECKS! IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?

Gah. I'll take the greyish ones, with the stupid fucking buttons and the horrible stripey pair that I'll end up using to mop up tea spills. No, I don't have a fucking nectar card, and if you make yourself the fifth person to ask me if I want one in an hour I'll crush your elbows in the till and choke you with a jockstrap.


So, all things considered, today was a limited success. I still need trousers, but I ought to be able to get away on Saturday for ten minutes and buy some in Canterbury. Hurrah!


conclusion: Shopping is still for wankers. And I'm not homophobic or anything, but I'd quite like it if there was at least one packet of underwear in the world that didn't feature some bronzed, half-naked ponce on the cover with his bollocks sellotaped to the inside of his pants as though I wouldn't know how to wear them without a serving suggestion. Nobody looks at these things and thinks "WOW I WILL ALSO LOOK LIKE ADONIS NOW I HAVE THESE DEBENHAMS COTTON BRIEFS", and nobody ever will. Stop it, all of you.

Oh, and do people really pay an extra thirty quid for clothes just because they've got the name of some gay Italian sewn into them?

Why? I mean... just... why? Is it possible to do this and still be considered an intelligent life form?

Canterbury tomorrow, then, and if things go to plan I'll feel quite pleased in my new clothes, but will soon be having them torn off and flung carelessly over someone else's furniture. Hurrah!

Joans mate, if you're reading this - fancy splitting a taxi with me?