New Year

Okay so I think 2013 might the year of my mid life crisis.

For a start I think I'm dressing too much like a teenager. In London you can get away with it. Wearing high top sneakers and women's skinny stonewash jeans can be labelled as "post modern" if you can blag your way out of it. I've always thought, and you can disagree with me here, that I have been on the right side of fashionable dressing. Yes, I've always pushed the envelope slightly - those who remember the luminous yellow skinnies and floral shirts, step forward. Now I'm actually visibly sighing in front of aztec prints on mannequins and wondering which format I should go for that might befit my age. Should I have it emblazoned across my chest on a cheap Matalan t-shirt that I can quite happily cut down for dusters when the fashion fizzles out? Or do I pay £19.95 for a simple squiggle on the pocket of an overpriced denim shirt, similar to one that I threw out in 1999 with my Nirvana Nevermind album (I only deigned to like track five, just to be sociable).
To date, I have relented and purchased two shades of chinos..... Chinos? I haven't worn chinos since my mother bought some at Next Kidswear, midway through her Howards Way phase. And not only am I buying them, but I'm buying them in terracotta and berry. Thats right. I am choosing a colour palette that was last seen in a peanut butter and jam sandwich. And why? Because they're on full display in the shop front of Topman. And since Topman is the yardstick by which all of the Gloucestershire male's 2013 trends should be measured, I am sure that I am due to be bamboozled by 2010's fashion for at least three more years to come. And, much to my sister's chagrin, I will try and keep up with it for now. My previous penchant for all things draping is now wholly unpalatable. Even for the people of this fair town who, by and large, don't give a fuck about what THEY wear, but they give a mighty shit about what I wear!

And lastly the music I listen to. Last week I yielded to public demand - and by public I mean my own head, and downloaded a dubstep album and, after being informed that Skrillex wasn't the new name for Cif Power Gel...... I actually quite liked it. Only to be chastised by my junior muse, for acting far too young; like a 17 year old gay! What more can I do? Apparently Little Mix is off limits, Ke$ha is no go. So what am I supposed to listen to? Mash Ups are age old, Rebecca Ferguson is a poor mans Sade and Sade (if pronounced correctly) is either the slang word for a posh sheister or a new island they've found in the Maldives. Well I am here to tell you my friends, that Little Mix's album is far too ballad heavy (well of course it is now that I'm listening to Skrillex) and Ke$ha's album isn't a patch on the last one and I'm sorry, but no matter how many "swags" she drops in in lieu of consonants that she has taken out, Rita Ora's album will never be as original as she thinks it is. What happened to the good old days of the inoffensive, banal lyriced, sway from left to right in a donkey jacket pop from the 2000's? I mean, when did you ever see Hear'Say wishing they had a "drunk sex feeling" a la the aforementioned Miss Ora? What is a drunk sex feeling anyway? Surely if you were drunk, you wouldn't remember. I never have. Hangover guilt is MUCH nearer the mark.

In conclusion, I think that I am going to have to ride the storm a bit. Until I get a nice little clique of thirty something Glostonians as friends, I think I am going to have to be a sort of age-chameleon. That is, of course, until my crows feet give me away....