Velociraptor trousers

It will perhaps surprise you to know that at work I am known as a fashionista. Whether this is because I once went to Milan, or because I frequently have something to say about what my team (all much younger than me) are wearing I’m not sure. More likely is that this is an inside joke based on my own low standards of sartorial elegance. To put this into context, my favourite shirt dates from 1999 and I still wear it. It was once white but is now more of a grey colour, and it is fair to say that they don’t make shirts like this anymore. I love it like and old friend, and equate its longevity with unrivalled quality – they made things properly in the last century. I also still wear some shoes that I bought in 1997, although there is a slight element of Trigger’s Broom about those. Anyway, all I am trying to say is that when it comes to fashion I am the last person that should be allowed any say whatsoever in what constitutes as being well dressed.

So naturally this is exactly what I am going to do. I have one major objection to the 2017 ‘look’, and this is the phenomenon of Velociraptor Trousers that seems to be sweeping the nation. You probably know what I am talking about – this is where somebody crafts a perfectly serviceable pair of trousers or leggings or whatever, and then throws them into a cage of raging dinosaurs which then rip them to shreds. The dinosaurs are then distracted allowing the what is left of the trousers to be retrieved, at which point they are then shipped to shops up and down the land where they sell like hot cakes. Seen someone wearing some recently? I bet you probably have as they're everywhere. I simply cannot understand what would motivate somebody to wear trousers that are basically a few threads away from falling to bits. What is even more daft is that they have been deliberately ruined and the whole scenario was completely avoidable. Make the trousers, sell them to somebody. Skip the dinosaurs.

Some of the examples I have seen are probably more slash than actual material. Now I draw the line at wandering round taking photos of peoples’ legs, so I’ve stolen all of these ones from the internet. In the cold light of day tell me that this isn’t ridiculous? One slip or scrape and you’ll have nothing left! I mean some of my trousers do eventually end up looking a bit like this, but that’s only after a decade or so of exemplary service and it is always a sad day when they finally give up the ghost. To deliberately waste ten years of good wearing is nothing more than vandalism. Just say no!

WARNING - BIRD CONTENT!

Sorry about this, but as this is obviously a birding blog it would be remiss of me not to stay on message. On Wanstead Flats last weekend I saw, amongst other things, a Tree Pipit, a Yellow Wagtail, and three Whinchats. Not sure what else the autumn has to give at this point other than Ring Ouzel, but I live in hope.

Glad Rags

I've remembered what I wanted to write about that I forgot a few days ago and had to talk about a Partridge instead. In all honesty the Partridge was probably better, but here goes. I was moved to think about this subject by my own children, one of whom is approaching that age. We were travelling back down from Scotland on the train after Christmas, and waiting on the platform at Kirkcaldy as it pulled in I scanned around to make sure that everyone was present, not playing on the tracks and so on, as all good shepherds do, and for a moment panic set in as I couldn't see the kids. There was Mrs L with the suitcases, but in place of my kids were three small gansta rappers dressed in hoodies with bright shoes (trainers, I think they're called) and caps. And then I realised that they were my kids, and that they looked ridiculous. Not that they look different to any other children of their ages, but that this is just what kids these days wear. God, I thought, did I ever look quite so stupid when I was a kid?

Yes.

Most emphatically YES in capital letters. I looked absurd!

But did I in fact think that I looked really cool and, dare I say it, stylish? O-hhhh yes. Big time. If you didn't know already, I do not have a single stylish bone in my entire body. Never have, never will. But this did not stop me as a brand new teenager thinking I 'had it'. Are all kids as delusional as I was? Did my parents not look at me, shake their heads, and think I'd get over it? Why did they never say anything to me?!  Perhaps this is something that young people have to work out on their own, and anything a parent says disapprovingly to a teenager simply makes it more compelling to said teenager Had they in fact said I looked like a total plonker, would I have hit the shops the next day?

Top of the fashion crimes list was my grey and white paisley shirt. Short-sleeved, more than a hint of shiny, I adored it. I looked and felt positively amazing in it! And it was awful! Looking back on it from the pedestal of 2015, that late 80s shirt was positively disgusting! It is a shame that I was on the way down from my parents, as I am sure that in the family photo albums there is a photo of me in that shirt, and I would very much like to share it with you. Were my parents not so technologically inept I could perhaps have them scan it and email it to me as they will, I am sure, remember the shirt. Another time perhaps, but for now just imagine the most grotesquely patterned cheap-looking monochromatic shirt that anyone anywhere ever produced, and that's it.

And then there was the jumper that got me sent home from school. I was of course a model pupil, if a bit of a smart arse, and so when I read the official - and if I might say so, poorly drafted - uniform policy, it occurred to me that there was nothing within the spirit of the text that said I couldn't wear my frankly superb diamond-pattern golfing jumper. All school jumpers had to be black, grey, or red. Well I had just the thing, a jumper that in addition to having all those colours simultaneously was also irrepressibly fashionable.

I don't have a photo handy of this either, however if you google "cool jumper circa 1988" the top hit is basically it. Imagine this bad boy with a darker shade of grey as the main weave and that's what I wore to school that day.

And shortly afterwards it's what I wore home from school that day.... Despite my protestations that this jumper significantly over-achieved versus the uniform policy, I was sent packing by a stern teacher with no fashion sense whatsoever. Its effect on the female population thus remains unknown, but I can only imagine that my life would have turned out very differently had Mr Caldwell agreed with me that it was sublimely kosher....

Oh dear. I can only look back now and shake my head. What was I thinking? I suppose it is a stage that we all have to go through before we 'find' ourselves. You should just all be glad I haven't found lycra. 

Yet.